Comparing Islam and Christianity on violence Free Essay Example, 2000 words

However, questions are continuously raised in the approach of people in Christianity towards using force and violence in a justified manner. Throughout the history of Christianity, certain teachings of the Old Testament and the New Testament were referred with regard to justifying the use of force or violence in Christianity (Volf 1-17). According to Weaver, the answer to the question of whether Christianity supports violence is quite simple for many. This is because of the fact that there are various scenarios which can directly present the controversial approach of Christianity towards violence which notably include the Warrior Pope’s in the history, support of the Christians towards the corporal and capital punishment and the extensive practice of slavery among the many that exist. Conversely, Weaver also argued about a few of the aspects including the teachings of Jesus where He taught people about loving the enemies, eliminating non-violence from the society and ensuring peace all over the world extensively oppose the aspect of violence (Harris, †Letter to a Christian Nation†; Weaver, â€Å"Violence In Christian Theology†). Hence, the worldviews of the relationship between Christianity and violence is quite blurred and the debate in this subject matter everlasting. We will write a cust om essay sample on Comparing Islam and Christianity on violence or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now WORLDWIDE VIEWS OF VIOLENCE IN ISLAM Similar to Christianity, violence in Islam is also an important topic of extensive discussion worldwide. Observably, a few of the doctrines and texts associated with Islam provide strong evidences and cases of their association with extensive violence. According to the study of Sutton and Vertigans, western world holds a fixed view towards Islam where they directly depict it as the religion of violence. The study also states that as per the western world, Islam is †a religion of the sword† where conflict, aggressions and terrorism are deeply prevalent within the activities of the people (1-33). In this regard, Puniyani depicts that owing to the extensive association of the religion with terrorism, people within the Islamic community also hold the view that this religion is associated with activities of violence (1-25). However, the research of Juergensmeyer affirms that like in any other religion, the teaching of Islam also focuses more on ascertaining peace and non-violence throughout the world with occasionally allowing the use of force and violent activities. He further believes that similar to Christianity, Islam also does not disregard violence at one point while on the other hand it teaches that self-defense is a right of human beings (3-20).