(October 27, 2014 at 10:17 am)abaris Wrote: @xpastorNo quarrel with what you say here about the political dimension.
I think you also have to look at the problem from a political perspective.
All the holy books preach violence when you know what you're looking for. The reason why we don't see large scale violence from radical christians or radical jews is that they're quite comfortable in their political and social environment. Incidents happen nevertheless, such as bombing abortion clinics or killing doctors or the slaughter Barruch Goldstein commited in a mosque. Relatively isolated incidents, but the potential for violence is existing, it only lies dormant.
Now look at the Middle East. It is in flames. Whole generations grow up without having any perspective in life and so radical preachers have a field day. If you got nothing to lose in life, you can at least have a glorious death and a prominent place in paradise. By the way, that's the same argument the christian priests used to motivate people for their crusades. Radical Islam is a relatively new phenomenon. It grew on the fertile soil of ongoing conflict.
I would only add that based on their respective Holy Books, Islam is inevitably more politicized than Christianity. In his later years Mohammed was the state, and this outlook was woven into the very texture of Koran, Hadith, Sira. In the NT times Christianity was far from having power. Although Christianity was to become the state religion for many centuries in European nations, there is absolutely nothing in the NT preventing the separation of church and state. Not so with Islam. It has always had trouble being in a minority position.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House