An excellent essay on Judaism and Christianity as they relate to Islam and violence.
Too often there are Muslim apologists that insist on equating the Christian Crusades as being the pillar of Christianity and “proof” that Christianity is as violent as Islam, if not more. Along with many Bible references of an historical nature, also taken out of context by the apologists and applied incorrectly to Judaism and Christianity.
No matter how much the Islam apologists try to do it, the Crusades were anything but an example of spreading Christianity by the sword. The Crusades were defensive responses to Islamic encroachment on Christian lands. It doesn’t take a historian to figure that out. It does take a moron a huge leap in conjecture and innuendo to make the case that the Crusades are similar or worse than the spread of Islam by the sword.
Read this for a really well done essay on the topic.
Raymond Ibrahim: Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?
by Raymond Ibrahim
My essay from the Middle East Quarterly (Summer 2009 vol.16 num.3, p. 3-12):
“There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur’an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam.”[1] So announces former nun and self-professed “freelance monotheist,” Karen Armstrong. This quote sums up the single most influential argument currently serving to deflect the accusation that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant: All monotheistic religions, proponents of such an argument say, and not just Islam, have their fair share of violent and intolerant scriptures, as well as bloody histories. Thus, whenever Islam’s sacred scriptures—the Qur’an first, followed by the reports on the words and deeds of Muhammad (the Hadith)—are highlighted as demonstrative of the religion’s innate bellicosity, the immediate rejoinder is that other scriptures, specifically those of Judeo-Christianity, are as riddled with violent passages.
