Introduction
Islam and Christianity belong to the same branch of religious beliefs that have emerged in the Middle East. Despite the current trend of setting these religions as different, both of them have very many details in common. Several important figures are the same in Islam and Christianity, and the storylines in the Bible and Koran match in many parts of these books. However, a lot of people currently view Islam as a religion of war against the “unfaithful ones.” Christianity, on the contrary, is promoted as a religion of peace. Although modern terrorist groups have the Muslim ideology, Christianity was used to wage wars in the Middle Ages, and the most important similarity between these factors is that religion is often used to receive material benefits.
Summary
Christianity has emerged from Judaism, which predicted the coming of a new king to Earth that would finish all the hardships of true God’s followers. However, Christ became a prophet that promoted ideas which later formed into a new religious wave. According to it, he was God’s son who died for the sins of ordinary people, giving them the ability to go to Heaven. Islam does not support the same belief, yet Christ is one of the most important figures in this religion as well. He is one of the prophets that tell people about the right path to Allah.
Christianity as a philosophy is based on the idea of mercy and love for other members of the human society. However, some Christian readings feature practices that are cruel, which must be applied to people who refuse to believe in Christ and his sacrifice. Nevertheless, for the most part, they promote kind behavior. Koran is not so uniform. Many people believe that it contains the call to wage war against those people who are not Muslim. In fact, this is one of the official claims of various modern terrorist groups.
Terrorist Organizations
Islam
One of the most well-known terrorist organizations in the modern world is ISIS. It operates mainly in Syria as one of the parties of the local war conflict. However, ISIS recruits many followers all over the world, mainly through the propaganda of Islam and the description of how different the life of Muslims who join it would be. The followers of this organization often commit attacks in European or American cities. Boko Haram is another terrorist organization that is known for its cruelty (Graham, 2016). Unlike ISIS, it operates mainly in Africa, it’s a home region. Other terrorist groups have similar strategies. However, their actions are not uniform, and many of these groups are rivals.
Christianity
Despite the promoted image of Christianity as a religion of peace, it was used in the past to explain invasions and mass murder. One of the brightest examples was the numerous crusades of the Middle Ages when European rulers attacked the Middle Eastern region to become wealthier. One of the most recent facts associated with the extremist behavior is the Ku Klux Klan, the movement that aimed to physically eliminate African-Americans in the U.S. While most of the claims of its members concerned the matters of civilization, Christianity was also used to support their actions.
Conclusion
Not a single religion promotes violence. Both Christianity and Islam support practices targeted at helping each other and caring for society. However, many terrorist groups often use religion to ground their actions, which causes negative reactions like modern Islamophobia.
Reference
Graham, D. (2016). Boko Haram: 30,000 dead after years of carnage.The World Post. Web.