Page 6 of 18: Large-scale violence

One launched the first Crusade. The other ordains preaching alone.

Muhammad

It is true that the word "Crusade" comes from the word "cross," but it is used here in the broad sense of "holy war." Muslims today forget that Muhammad was the first to launch one, long before the western Europeans responded with theirs. In the ten years that he lived in Medina, he either sent out or went out on seventy-four raids, skirmishes and battles. Sura 9 is his last revelation in its entirety before he dies. He commissions his followers to wage war on Jews and Christians or the People of the Book or Scripture (= Bible).

Sura 9:29 says:

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (Muhammad) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued (Hilali and Khan, insertions in parentheses are theirs)

This verse that commands battle against Christians and Jews is all about theology and belief. It says nothing explicit about a real and physical harm done to Islam. Muhammad launched his Tabuk Crusade in late AD 630 against the Byzantine Christians. He had heard a rumor that an army was mobilizing to invade Arabia, but the rumor was false, so his 30,000 jihadists returned home, but not before imposing a jizya tax on northern Christians and Jews. They had three options: (1) fight and die; (2) convert to Islam; (3) or submit and pay the second-class-citizen jizya tax for the "privilege" of living under Islam.

Jesus

After he was resurrected from the dead and just before he ascended to rule on high, he sends forth his followers to preach the gospel without violence. In Evangelical Christianity this passage is known as the Great Commission.

18 Then Jesus came to [the disciples] and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

Nothing in these verses command warfare. For centuries after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, his disciples crisscrossed the Mediterranean world preaching without violence. Despite being persecuted, they turned the world right-side up and transformed it.