Religion and War

It is a regular conservative talking point that the Koran states that Islam should be spread by the sword. Hmmm. What does the Bible say?:

Firstly the image above is taken from the Bible given to Louis the XI back in the 13th century. What a peaceful bucolic scene.

expert from Psalm 149

Let the godly ones exult in glory;
Let them sing for joy on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
And a two-edged sword in their hand,
To execute vengeance on the nations
And punishment on the peoples,
To bind their kings with chains
And their nobles with fetters of iron,
To execute on them the judgment written;
This is an honor for all His godly ones.
Praise the LORD!

Jashua 6 20-21:

"When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys."

Ah the peaceful Bible...

My point is that both the Koran and the Bible are filled with sword play, war, and lots of bloodletting. So for a Christian or a Muslim to try and tell the other that "their" religion is one of violence is a joke. Both religions have been spread with violence and both spread with peace.

I am tired of having the ignorant Christian voice the only one that is ever heard. Many, and I mean many - the majority, of Christian scholars understand very well the history of both faiths. Only an ignorant person could claim that Christianity spread via only peace and Islam via violence.

The sad truth is that Islam is at a violent crossroads. Christianity has really only been at peace for the last 300 years. Prior to that very few people would have considered Christianity and peace one in the same. And even during that brief three centuries there have been outbreaks of Christian terrorism. Particularly in Northern Ireland. Few Londoners would argue that those who planted bombs in stores and train stations were not inflicting terror upon the population. And likewise few Catholics would view the assassinations carried out by the ultra unionists as civil.

It is advisable to remember the nature of the last great Christian blood letting. In the 1680's the Protestant population of France was viciously, and at sword point, either converted, enslaved, or massacred outright. Children were taken from the parents to be raised by Catholic parents, and protestant towns burned to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed into England fleeing the genocide.

That was only the most recent mass Christian genocide. What made the genocide possible and popular among Catholics was that it was standard operating procedure and had been for a thousand years. Yet it would be a great mistake to assert, because of the genocide of the Huguenots, that Catholic Christians were more violent than Protestants. The violence was policy carried out for various political and personal reasons, by the King, and the evil nature was due to the king's ambitious secretary of war. Even the King was horrified when he learned how the "conversions" had been carried out.

Today there are fringe elements of most all faiths that see violence as required to serve God. What makes the fringe dangerous is when circumstances become such that their way, the way of Satan, is seen as Godly. Poverty, war, uncertainty, all can lead to that.