This is a great article that compares the life of Jesus with the life of Muhammad. When one looks at the life of the founders of the two religion there really is no comparison between the two.
One point though, if anyone really thinks the world is 33 percent Christian they do not know what a Christian is. I will admit that 33 percent of the world identify with Christianity but that is not the same thing as them being Christians.
What motivates fundamental Muslims to violence? Much effort has gone into answering this. Muslim apologists are quick to point out Christians have also committed violence. Secularists suggest anybody who believes in God is prone to violence, conveniently ignoring the atheistic killings of the French Revolution, Stalin’s purges and Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution.In an attempt to uncover motivations, founders of the world’s two largest religions can be compared.
According to the www.CIA.gov World Factbook, the world’s 6.5 billion people are 33.32 percent Christian and 21.01 percent Muslim.
If a computer acts up, the technician resets it to the default settings it had when it left the factory. If followers of a religion act up, one should examine the default settings the religion had when it left its founder.
One can examine the life of Jesus from the four Gospels.
One can examine the life of Muhammad from the Quran, Hadith and sources like the Sirat Rasul Allah.
I’m not claiming Muhammad did not receive any revelations from some supernatural being but in any case this being surely was an imposter and not the Lord of Israel! Muhammad banned two Judaized Arab tribes from Yathrib (Medinah) and massacred all men of a third Jewish tribe remaining there, named the Qurayza, as they were allegedly supporting Muhammad’s pagan Meccan adversaries. And while Islam did not spread exclusively by the sword everywhere, they surely didn’t refrain from forced conversions, coercion and war! Islam’s idea of “spreading the gospel” (the Qur’an that is) was to subjugate unbelievers to a religious governmental establishment (Caliphate) with the Commander of the Faithful (a military title) at its head. This started during Muhammad’s lifetime! Yathrib became a holy city due to Muhammad’s presence, which of course posed a great threat to Mecca which had been the religious center par excellence on the Arabian peninsula up till then.
This is very different from early Christianity. In fact the question as to Constantine the Great’s sincerity when he adopted Christianity as the state religion is debated by scholars. Men like him would adopt religion just for the sake of their own politcal ambitions. In Islam, however, politics and holy war have been the means to spread their religion from the early days onward. By contrast, in the “Christian” world, religion has generally been used a means for powerful men to saveguard their position… so that’s pretty much the other way around. I’ve never heard Jesus, Paul, Peter or John suggest we hunt down the infidels and burn them! Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Islam thinks it needs a wordly representation of God on earth, like dominionist christians (and the Catholic church among others) do.
By the way, early Muslims faced persection in Mecca like early Christians did at their time but the difference is that true Christians endured the persecution and never intended to fight back and seize control of the authorities. On the contrary, Paul actually urged us to submit to the authorities…