Bet the cost of wine has gone up in that church.
And did Samson exist? is he any more true than popeye?
Muslim terrorists are just that very true very mad and very bad.

Rhian / GrahamY,

I read you argument and I have a counter one:

What Christianity is and isn's is decided by the pope of the time as he is considered to be divine. Christianity took violent and/ or non-violent terms regardless of Christ teachings.

As for Islam, the reference to violence in the Quran are in within a context of defence and not agression. There are 19 refernces in the Quran and they all carry the same meaning: fight those who fight you and shall not transgress which contrary to Yahweh in the OT for example. A clear proof that the context is understood & practised by muslim majorities is that Arab Christians and jews lived among Muslims over the last 14 centuries. The Palestinian and Egyptian churches were maintained by Muslims or Muslim dominated countries.

Peace,
T

Fellow-Human, no-one regards the Pope as divine, not even Catholics. Protestants and Orthodox don't even regard him as the boss. He's the head of the Catholic church, which doesn't mean that Catholics are duty bound to do everything he says either.

To analyse this properly you've got to look at the founder of each religion. Jesus eschewed violence and earthly power, Mohammed was a warrior who sought earthly power. That doesn't lead me to conclude that every act of violence committed by a Muslim is condoned by Islam, but it does lead me to the conclusion that Islam is inherently more violent than Christianity. But you can show "19 references in the Quran".

You won't find an instance in the gospels of Jesus saying be violent to those who are violent to you, you'll find exactly the opposite - do good to those who do evil to you.

GrahamY,

The references in Islam to allowing self, land and society defence is interpreted in today’s context of military and criminal justice system. Mohamed (pbuh) was a prophet king and if you need to compare his actions in your context, compare them to prophet kings of the Old Testament.

PS; Christianity was founded in the name of Jesus (pbuh) and the wisdom of his death and not by him. On the same token, Mohamed (pbuh) never claimed Islam to be a new religion but rather the purified religion of Abraham.

I am not going to comment on the authenticity of today’s gospels in circulation but I believe Jesus (pbuh) message was to emphasize the importance of love and forgiveness and move away from literalism which in essence is a noble message. But I don’t believe that Jesus imagined a society without laws to govern internal and external relations. It would be disassociated with humans and human nature.

PS: Apologies re the Pope divinity I meant holiness. The pope is the interpreter of Jesus teachings and hence many popes (Urban for example) have interpreted Jesus teachings for war purposes. Perhaps that explains the Muslims fear of the pope’s comments because the crusades took a ‘papal’ green light from a similar statement 10 centuries ago.

Back to on topic : I believe self inflicted fear and mass paranoia to pre-empting the ‘others aggression’ is a key factor to many atrocities including the crusades and terrorism. Literal interpretation of Islam and Christianity was just the catalyst.