Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51820 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 264 pages

From the Inside Flap
Christianity or Islam: which is the real "religion of peace"?

Almost any liberal pundit will tell you that there's a religion bent on destroying our Constitution, stripping us of our liberties, and imposing religious rule on the U.S. And that religion is . . .Christianity! About Islam, however, the Left is silent--except to claim a moral equivalence between the two: if Islam has terrorists today, that's nothing compared to the Crusades, inquisitions, and religious wars in Christianity's past.

But is this true? Are conservative Christians really more of a threat to free societies than Islamic jihadists? Is the Bible really "just as violent" as the Qur'an? Is Christianity's history really as bloodstained as Islam's? In Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer not only refutes such charges, but also explains why Americans and Europeans must regain an appreciation of our Christian heritage if we ever hope to defeat Islamic supremacism. In this eye opening work, Spencer reveals:

* The fundamental differences between Islamic and Christian teachings about warfare against other religions: "Love your enemies" vs. "Be ruthless to the unbelievers"

* The myth of Western immorality and Islamic puritanism and why the Islamic world is less moral than the West

* Why the Islamic world has never developed the distinction between religious and secular law that is inherent in Christianity

* Why Christianity has always embraced reason--and Islam has always rejected it

* Why the most determined enemies of Western civilization may not be the jihadists at all, but the leftists who fear their churchgoing neighbors more than Islamic terrorists

* Why Jews, Christians, and peoples of other faiths (or no faith) are equally at risk from militant Islam

Spencer writes not to proselytize, but to state a fact: Christianity is a true "religion of peace," and on it Western civilization stands. If we are not to perish under Islam's religion of the sword--with its more than 100 million active jihadists seeking to impose sharia law--we had better defend our own civilization.

About the Author
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Truth about Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Islam (and the Crusades), as well as four other critically acclaimed books on Islam and terrorism, including Islam Unveiled and Onward Muslim Soldiers. He has also written eight monographs and hundreds of articles. Spencer lives in a secure, undisclosed location.

Customer Reviews

The Work of a True Scholar in Islam.
Don't listen to the reviewers who say Robert Spencer is not knowledgeable enough about Islam. He could teach quite a few Muslims about their own books and history, I have studied it deeply for seven years myself.

Also bear in mind the doctrine of Al-Taqiyya and Kithman or kitman, which began as a shia practice (they claim)but is widespread in all of Islam to protect the faith from outside critcism for some of it's questionable teachings. I deal daily one on one with Moslems real time, online and they very frequently use this practice. Even posing as non-muslims in order to decieve others. It really is amazing how proud they are of outwitting.

Mohammad himself said it was ok to lie to enemies (and that all infidels are enemies) as well as to your wives, and instructed a few of his followers to join the enemy camp by claiming they were friends and abhorred Mohammad. Islam is in no way, shape or form similar to Christianity, so one must bear this in mind and not assume the religion says to be kind to unbelievers or love your enemies. It is actually the opposite school.

I have known of Robert Spencers work for some time now and he has always been impeccable and non judgemental in his work. This book is as equally fair and a valuable addition to anyone's library who wants to have concrete knowledge about Islam.

I do not hate Muslims. But I have come to strongly dislike Mohammadism amd what it has been doing to the people as a whole, who choose to closely follow Mohammads teachings.

An evil book
Robert Spencer produces a hateful, revisionist, and triumphalistic argument about why he thinks Christianity and the Western world (he conflates the two) are superior to Islam. Christianity is a religion of peace and dialogue and Islam a religion of terror and suppression. He accuses Christianity's detractors of "cherry-picking" evidence of the support of violence in the Old and New Testaments, but then goes on to do the same in his treatment of the Qu'ran and Christian history itself.
But the most basic error he makes is to dismiss the long and bloody history of Christian cruelty, forced conversion, slavery, destruction of native cultures, and environmental disaster with a flick of his temporal wand. Yes, there were Christians who did such things in the past, he notes, but this was not essential to Christian's message of peace and love for others. Besides, most of these more troublesome episodes of Christian history were not as bad as they seemed and have now passed. Christian anti-Semitism was not all that bad (especially compared with Muslim anti-Semitism). Slavery was a mistake and Christians finally figured that out.
Even if one accepts the latter point that such Christian atrocity-mongering has diminished (which is eminently debatable with good Christians in America still enthused for racial and gender inequality and positively foaming at the mouth for guns, capital punishment, and a vast nuclear arsenal) it is patently false to suggest that it was anything other than the Enlightenment, the throwing off of theocracies, and the embrace of secular, constitutional democracies, that spurred our best, though always fragile, efforts to live with our differences without killing each other.
No one is arguing, as Spencer seems to believe, that there are not Islamic terrorists and theocrats who wish to suppress people with Sharia law. They use religion to justify their violence. Yet Spencer ignores the consensus that most of the anger that drives such things is political rather than religious. It is anger at Western cultural hegemony, globalization, and the inequality of wealth that feeds the discontent of radical Islam.
Why should Christians who do evil get the benefit of the doubt that they simply missed the point of their faith's deeper teachings on peace in the pursuit of more worldly and self-serving ends, while Muslims do so because they are just following their religion? Because Spencer wants to goad on the great "Clash of Civilizations" view of the world and take up good, loving, Christian arms, if necessary, to defend the great Western civilization of peace and reason. With books like these, he and his ilk may just succeed.

informative book....
Spencer is well studied in islam... This is more of an eye openening / informative book rather than an "islam bashing" book as the bad rerviews here accuse. If you want to understand the jihadists of today you must understand the historical / religious roots of their belief. Spencer points out text in the koran / hadiths to the modern jihad and helps remove the whitewash of the "religion of peace". I thought it was a good read.