Robwar. So does Christianity. Some have estimated the body count due to Christianity to be in the billions. [emphasis mine]
Cite a source. Otherwise, don’t bring up vague and obviously exaggerated numbers. That’s careless and naive.
I disagree. Mohammed was wrong on some things(jesus’ divinity). However he did bring the worship of God (even in an inferior form) to the Arabs and Central Asians.
He introduced a concept of God that made Judaism and Christianity null and void. As I said in another thread, a person is not saved by monotheism, they are saved by Christ. Christ said he was the truth (Jn 14:6), not that a vague form of monotheism was the truth.
He also listened to demonic lies in a desert and became a false prophet. When people did that in the Old Testament, people understand that they’re the bad guys, but when people do it nowadays, people act as if one can get a free pass for it.
Now by saying this I am not claiming that Christianity is a religion of violence. I am saying that all religions have their dark times when people sin horribly “in the name of God”
The question is, what did the founders and earliest followers of said religion do, practice, and teach? You bring up bad things Christians have done, but what a Christian does of his own accord and what Christianity teaches are two separate things. One can only peruse the New Testament to see that the crusades and inquisitions were contrary to the will of Christ and his apostles.
I can even go further, into the first few hundred years of Christian history. For example, you cite Roman emperors persecuting pagans…did you know that the earliest Church Fathers
openly condemned such things? Athanasius, Hilary of Poiters and others openly attacked the persecution of Pagans and non-Christians. You can go back even further, with men like Tertullian who argued that religion was a matter of conviction, not coercion.
Now let us review Islam. We have troubling passages in the Quran, and while Muslims today beg us to understand them within their context, the earliest followers of Mohammad treated them differently. S. 9:29, one of the last verses revealed by Mohammad, and revealed after he took Mecca, states:
Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled. [S. 9:29; Sahih International]
Ayat 30 goes on to mention Jews and Christians, and the earliest Muslim commentators stated that ayat 30 goes back to ayat 29, including Jews and Christians among them. The verse clearly states that Muslims are fight “those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day,” as well as those who do not obey Mohammad (“His Messenger”) and do not adopt Islam (“the religion of truth”), and they are not to stop fighting until they pay the jizyah (the “protection” tax forced upon non-Muslims) and who are “humbled” (other translations say “made low,” “submit,” etc. - point is, it’s a bad thing).
Now let’s go to the earliest companions of Mohammad, who persecuted non-Christians and limited their rights. I’m sure many on CAF wear crosses or crucifixes around their necks (as I often do) - if you lived during the early years of Islam, you could be arrested for that. Churches and synagogues that suffered damage were not allowed to be repaired. Church bells were forbidden from ringing. Many of these laws and practices continued well into the Middle Ages in some areas.
The point of all this is that there’s a difference between one member of a religion doing something bad that is isolated from the teachings and men he claims to follow, and another member of a religion doing something bad because he is following exactly what the teachings and men he claims to follow tell him to do.
