Discussion thread for the Hamas Attacks Israel thread, October 2023

You could say exactly the same thing about Christianity, or any other universalist religion.

“Islam” is an extremely broad category of belief systems that share certain characteristics. Same with “Christianity”.

There are hardliner branches of both faiths that do want to see everyone on the planet accept what they view as the true teachings of Jesus or Muhammad. Some portion of those people don’t just view this as a vague “wouldn’t it be nice” aspirational goal but are willing to proselytize, by force if necessary.

In 2023 these hardliners may be more numerous or influential in the Muslim world than in the Christian world (and even this is suspect - ever hear of the Lord’sResistanceArmy?), but at other times in history this was not the case. So it seems foolish (not to mention racist) to presume that this difference is caused by inherent differences between these faiths.

It seems far more reasonable to conclude that the difference is down to geopolitical and historical realities in regions dominated by Christianity (Europe) and Islam (the Middle East and North Africa).