Abrahamic Religions and their Holy Books

[abaris]

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.

Yeah, but still - at least in the USA the evangelicals try to legislate their religious believes on the state level. And they are successful in some cases. If they had their way, they would happily set up a christian Iran.

And look at Israel. The ultra orthodox are still a minority, but they already try to force their believes on the majority in the most vile way. They spit at school girls and try to enforce some kind of gender apartheid in their quarters and they harass shopkeepers opening their business at Shabat.

Radical religion is a growing problem everywhere. It's only our relatively stable western political systems that keep them at bay so far.

The Christians are an iron age mutation of the Jews who inherited from the Hebrew tribes. They changed the meme to include the weak and the poor. By cementing together enough of the underclasses, they built a large, accretive structure, resilient, powerful and growth oriented.

That may be true for early christianity, but let's not forget the Constantinian buttkissing contest of 325 at Nicaea. They sucked up to power and happily threw their every believes obverboards. That's their secret of success. That's why every given army had their field curates although prominent early christian thinkers banned christians from doing military service.