Extremists

The President started a conflagration over his comparison of Christianity with Islam or, to be more precise, comparing the Crusades with ISIS. (Is that finally an admission that ISIS is Islamic? Naw.) But he still defends Islam. In an interview with CNN, President Obama suggested that less than 1% of Muslims agree with Islamic terrorists.

"You know, I think that the way to understand this is there is an element growing out of Muslim communities in certain parts of the world that have perverted the religion, have embraced a nihilistic, violent, almost medieval interpretation of Islam, and they’re doing damage in a lot of countries around the world,” said Obama.

It's a difficult argument to make if you ask me. I would suggest that studies say something quite different. It would seem that those who live under an Islamic government are much more likely to agree with Islamic rule, and genuine Islamic rule calls for violence against infidels. That's why CNN could film people cheering for the 9/11 attack. It wasn't a minority. It was a crowd.

That, in fact, is the real difficulty in the argument. Here, let's see if I can reword the president to help you see the problem.

"You know, I think that the way to understand this is there is an element growing out of Christian communities in certain parts of the world that have perverted the religion, have embraced an interpretation of Christianity that goes back to its origins, and they’re doing damage in a lot of countries around the world.”

Do you see it now?

The truth is that when you compare the "instruction manual" for each religion--the Bible for Christianity or the Quran for Islam--you find two different religions going on. In the case of Christianity, the fundamental commands are "repent" and "love God" and "love your neighbor" (Of these last two Jesus said, "On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Matt 22:40).) On the notion of using any sort of violence to promote the religion, everything in Scripture screams against it. We arrive by faith, not by coercion. We are called to turn the other cheek, to love sacrificially, to love our enemies. Nothing in fundamental Christianity allows for terrorism or violence in the furtherance of the Gospel. Contrast that with Islam. The commands are repeated to kill, to shun, to defeat infidels. Pleasantries like "Strike off their heads" and "strike off the very tips of their fingers" are included. They are commanded to "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them" and to "make war on unbelievers."

So, we have two religions and two sets of adherents of these religions. In Christendom, you have those who offer violence in the name of Christ, but they do so against the biblical teachings. In Islam, you have those who offer violence in the name of Allah, and they do so in accordance with the Quran. In Christendom, you have those who seek first to love in the name of Christ, and they do so in accordance with biblical teachings. In Islam you have those who seek peace with others, but they do so in violation of the teachings of the Quran. In summary, then, both religions have their violent followers. In Christianity they violate Christ's teachings and in Islam they agree with Mohammed.

If "Muslim extremist" means "those who carefully follow the Quran and kill infidels", then "Christian extremist" refers to "those who follow the Bible and love God and their neighbors." Somehow these two do not seem to be the same thing.

Postscript

I need to clarify this. Here are two other angles from which to see my point.

Fundamentalists
In Christendom, there are the "liberals", people who have taken the Bible and altered orthodoxy in order to align it with modern views. Thus, clear texts like "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor 6:9-10) or "Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" (1 Sam 15:3) do not mean what they clearly say ... as they have always been understood. These have "helpfully" redefined Scripture to mean something new.

In Islam there are those (and I've known some) who have taken the Quran and altered its meaning. Clear texts have become mystical, allegorical, myth, but certainly not literal. "Yes," they tell me, "it says to cut off the head of the infidel, but that doesn't mean we're supposed to do that." These are the "liberals" of the Islamic world.

Both religions have them. Both have "fundamentalists" who say, "Oh, no, we're sticking with the original texts and their original meanings and we're not going to allow anyone to redefine the faith for us."

For Islam, those fundamentalists will kill infidels. For Christianity those fundamentalists will turn the other cheek. Really not the same thing.

Reformation
By "reformation" I mean returning to the original. For Islam that would be the 7th century. For Christianity that would be the first couple of centuries of the modern era. The president said that some 0.1% of Muslims (and I seriously question that number) want to return Islam to a "medieval interpretation of Islam"--it's origins. In the Reformation (and in many current circles of Christianity), the aim was to return Christianity to its origins--the first couple of centuries.

What was original Christianity like? They shared all things in common. They were marked by their detractors as people who loved one another. They were pacifists, almost to the extreme. When Roman emperors declared that those who didn't bow to the emperor as God would be executed, they volunteered for execution.

What was original Islam like? Mohammed was a warrior (among other things). His followers carried on his legacy, expanding Islam by force of arms. The Crusades were not an incursion, but an effort to stop Islamic incursion.

The president pointed to the Crusades and the Inquisition and Christians today point with him at an evil, not a good. Islamic jihadists point to the death and destruction of their past and to that of today's warriors and applaud it. Not the same thing. A number of Christians today long to turn Christianity back to its original form. Millions (and the number is growing) of Muslims today want to return Islam back to its original form. Those two forms are diametrically opposed. The only comparison that can be made is not in their similarity, but in their vast differences.