There seems to be a major media push lately to blame world religions, generically, for all warfare and international conflicts. Many of these stories, like Christiane Amanpour's recent CNN documentary, "God's Warriors," tend to depict "Christianity"--by which they usually mean Protestant Fundamentalism--as quite similar to Islam and Judaism. There is a collective denial in modern culture about the very important differences in the teachings of Christ and Mohammed regarding violence and tribalism, as though Christ did not specifically teach His disciples to "love (their) enemies," and Mohammed did not specifically teach his disciples to decapitate their enemies. What gives here?
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How many modern educated Americans know, for instance, that the Byzantine Orthodox Christian Empire--including Syria, the Holy Land, North Africa, and Anatolia--was violently overthrown by Islam during the 7th through the 15th centuries? How many know that in Orthodox Byzantium war was always considered a very last resort, and that Orthodox Christian soldiers of Byzantium were required to do penance for a year after killing a Moslem in battle before they could take communion? In Orthodox Christianity, murder--even in war--could prevent people from getting into heaven. In Islam, murder was always a ticket to paradise.
One other thought about the modern concept of "God's warriors" and religion as evil. Homo sapiens have always been tribal and genocidal, like our closest biological relatives, the chimpanzees. They also happen to be religious. Yet, the two worst genocides in history were committed by anti-Christian atheists--Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. How do Richard Dawkins and the modern advocates of atheism explain this simple fact, if they insist that religion is the cause of "evil" in human history? I think Dostoevsky was right when he speculated (in T[i]he Brothers Karamazov)[/i] that "If God is dead, all things will become lawful." In today's world, it is not "God's" warriors, but rather Satan's warriors, who are driving all of us to the brink of extinction.