Well, Andrew Sullivan got that one wrong in his Iran live-blogging round-up. He gets something else half-right, noting Tweets are provisional, but without saying Tweets can be rumor-mongering, ether unwittingly or wittingly spreading urban legends, etc.Point is, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all three are neither “religions of war” or “religions of peace.”
Beyond finding admonitions to both war and peace in the Quran, we can do the same in the other two world religions.
The Tanakh has Isaiah talking about “bending swords into plowshares,” but another prophet later talks about “bending plowshares into swords.” Per a quote by Jesus, the temple is allegedly a “house for all nations,” but, earlier, King Saul is told to till all the Amalekites — men, women, children and even livestock.
In the Christian New Testament, Jesus, in one Gospel, tells Peter to put his sword away at the Garden of Gethsemane, after he cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest. But, earlier in that same account, he asked his disciples how many swords they had.
Elsewhere, he tells his listeners, “I came not to bring peace but division.”
And, as Islam had its jihad, Christianity had its Crusades. And Israel has religious Jews pushing settlements with new vigor, like Avigdor Lieberman.
Bottom line?
The three simply are religions, the youngest of them 1,500 years old, all coming from tribalist roots whose values systems almost make Pop Evolutionary Psychology sound true.
And they, and their Kool-Aid drinkers, label them as “religions of peace” as needed for external public relations, while not-insignificant minorities in all three push the “religions of war” side externally against the other two, or internally about their own “crusades” for “religious corporate communications,” also as needed.
Oh, and you bet your ass I'll be using the fake Photoshopped book cover in the future.
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