Reformation difference between Islam and Christianity that the MSM Ignores. ~ Vanity

It annoys me to no end when someone says that Christianity was just as bad as Islam in the past by some "supposedly" well meaning but totally ignorant Atheist Liberal.

What these fools all ignore was the Major differences in HOW the religions spread and WHEN they became misbehaving.

Christianity: Started very peaceful, spread mainly by word of mouth and voluntary conversions, took several hundred years to spread across the world and then never did it by the sword. Many early Christians were heavily persecuted. Most all powerful countries that were christian were usually a powerful country first that then later adopted Christianity as it spread peacefully. It was only later, hundreds of years after they became christian countries that bad things happened like the Spanish inquisition and witch burning.

When it came time to reform the reformers had a past of peace they could point to get the faith back on track as at one time Christians used to be the persecuted people, so the reformers could say, "this is wrong because we are doing the persecuting now, when we used to be the persecuted".

Islam: Started peaceful.... For about a few years then the founder of it wasn't getting any traction so he ramped up the violence in the text and made it into a conquering cult. Once this was done is was spread by the sword through violence and intimidation. It took less than a century to spread as far a Christianity had taken several centuries due to the despicable tactic of forced conversions. It wasn't early Muslims that were the persecuted, it was early Muslims actually doing the Persecution. Countries were not peacefully converted and existing empires slowly converted, but instead it was more of a reformatting and conquering by blatant force. The Muslim missionary had an army instead of a flock of peaceful followers. Bad things that the Muslims did not happen after Islam was well established. Instead the Bad things were done in the name of actually establishing it by force into new areas.

When it comes time to reform Islam there is no truly "peaceful past" that the reformers can use as a bulwark to help convince the masses that they are still being true to the faith, instead there is only a bloody history of conquering and extinguishing other religions. The Islamic reformers (the few that actually exist and are trying to reform it into a more peaceful form) do not have the tool of "early Islam where for hundreds of years Muslims were persecuted just like Christians". Instead they have a completely uphill battle where they only have a slight sliver of a few years of time at the very beginning before Mohammed changed his mind and went on a genocidal killing spree.

Islam has already had a reform, sadly it what we called Wahhabi Islam or Violent Jihad Islam, why because the reformers of faiths ALWAYS have to point to the past to reform their religions, and Islam has a very bloody past. Islam doesn't need another reformation, it actually needs an honest to goodness revolution.

It would be like trying to reform Christianity by only using Christs first sermon as a basis for reform while tossing out everything that happened afterwards out. Trying to sell that sort of reform would be met with people going "Why are you throwing out 90% of the bible?" and would never gain traction.

This is why Islam needs a Revolution, revolutions actually throw out the past history of the existing structure and attempt to replace it with something new, hopefully something more peaceful, but the success rate of a revolution actually accomplishing it's goal is a lot lower than a reformation because of this, revolution is risky. The success rate is low, but when you are starting out with Islam, any reformation is simply going to "spinning your wheels" because the baseline is violent jihad. Islam needs to throw away that violent world conquering baseline and only a risky revolution inside of Islam will do that, not a Reformation.

Well, there was a lot of violence in the “wars of religion” of the 16th century, most of it from of attacks on Catholics by the various Protestant groups, since Protestantism split up fairly early in its career. These groups included the Huguenots, the Anglicans and the Calvinists (who mostly attacked other Protestants). This of course was followed up by attacks from Catholics on Protestants. In many cases, including the inter-Protestant attacks, there was a secular political element on either side.

I'd like to see your references for this assertion, as history doesn't bear this out.

History does bear it out. Henry VIII launched a campaign not only against Catholics and the Catholic clergy, but even against buildings and statues. Much English art was destroyed by his marauding hordes, and many priests, monks and laypeople were executed.

Under Elizabeth I, it was even worse. When the English invaded Ireland, they launched a serious campaign against the Church; in fact, the great uncle (10 x removed, I believe) of a bishop of my diocese was appointed Bishop of Cashel in 1584, but was identified and turned in by Elizabeth’s spies, captured, and tortured for several months before finally being hanged outside the gates of Dublin.

The Huguenots were French, of course, and relentlessly attacked the Spanish and Portuguese, the main representatives of Catholicism, both on land and sea. At one point, they captured a ship with some 60 Portuguese Jesuit priests and brothers on their way to the missions in Brazil and literally made them walk the plank off the coast of the Azores. The Huguenots also destroyed massive amounts of France’s artistic treasury, particularly the famous monastery at Cluny.

And it is well known that Calvin had many rival Protestants put to death, such as Servetus, whom he had killed by “slow burning.” In fact, during the Puritan Revolution in England and Cromwell’s activities in Ireland, the Calvinists attacked not only the Catholics but even suppressed the Anglican Church as being “Royalist.” Of course, he also got the Penal Laws passed, which deprived Catholics of their land, their right to vote, run schools, etc. Most of these laws were not entirely overturned until the end of the 19th century.

My point was that none of this is justified in Christian scriptures, but violence is on the other hand abundantly justified in Islamic writings.

Your point: most of it from of attacks on Catholics

While borne out in England, the same wasn't true in continental Europe where French Catholic monarchs marauded Protestants starting with the Massacre of Vassy in 1562; Germany where Catholic monarchs oppressed the Protestants precipitating war and successfully killing heretics for Rome, but set the stage for the Thirty Year's war that started ostensibly as a war over religion, but 2/3 of it became a war waged for the purposes of territorial acquisition between Catholic monarchies.

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