Quote:
Originally posted by Stonan
I guess you could say that the Christian God says 'Thou shalt not kill' and Allah says 'Thou shalt kill infidels and yourself'
(BTW: this is just an educated guess from snipets of info. Please tell me if I'm wrong...  )
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I think you're oversimplifying the situation. For one thing, to imply that Christianity has forsaken violence in its history and that Islam is only about violence would be an oversimplification. It might be more correct to state that Christianity, at least at the upper levels, outgrew violence. During the Dark Ages, the word 'heretic' was as much a death sentence as 'infidel'. Personally, any belief which considers strangling you before you were burned to be their version of 'compassionate conservatism' needs to grow up.
Religions provide social order. Social order depends on belief in the religion, in this case belief in a comfy afterlife for putting up with s**t in this one. Anything which challenges those beliefs, say a large population of unbelievers, is inconvenient and can be seen as threat by their very existence.
A good, if long book on the subject is
Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History. I have not come even close to finishing this book, it is 750 pages.
While looking for the Amazon link, I also ran across this book.
The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity
What it comes down to is that popular religions are a lot like species of animals. To survive, animals have to be either prolific or tough and nasty. Yes, fluffy bunnies are survivors, but in general survivors are spiky, venomous, armored creatures you would not want to adopt.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are thousands of years old. Part of that was by being prolific, but part was also by adapting and countering threats to their existence. Judaism was dispersed after the second revolt and the destruction of the temple. In our case it was more a matter of trying to blend in wherever we went. Once the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire, Christianity didn't have to hide from anyone.
Now that we are in the third millenium, I hope we can adopt a wait-and-see attitude as to who is right about the nature of G-d. I personally am a little tired of killing in the name of this individual or that individual, who, if one can believe their followers, are actually nice guys.
As far as I know, religion, like law, is a human invention. This means that it is imperfect, and sometimes bloody.
I'm still waiting for everyone to grow up.