24/04/2025
The Chasm Needs to Close
Dear ,
Thank you for your take comparing Christianity with Islam. However, this view is not factual by any stretch of the imagination.
Before I delve into the facts, please note that I am an Orthodox Christian who follows the Jewish Rabbi Yeshua. I am not a Muslim, nor do I have plans of ever becoming one.
I am not saying Muslims do not have their faults. They do. All humans have faults. That is what makes us human. In reality, for most humans, their parents, names, religion, and nationality were chosen by Providence, or what some may call fate. This is why we should move from defining people by their religion to assessing them based on their characters.
Please note that Islamic Jihads have historically only been fought against idol worshippers. Not that I support it. But I just want to give you context. I am from Nigeria. We had a Jihad in 1804. Those who were already Muslims in what was the Kanem Bornu empire were spared when their king (el-Kanemi) wrote a letter to the leader of the Jihadists, proving that he and his people were Muslims.
Jihads are not fought against Christians. Christians and Jews are considered 'People of the Book' in Islam and are to be respected. Muhammad (SAW) did not wage war on the People of the Book.
Terrorism is wrong irrespective of whether it is by Islamic extremists in Northern Nigeria, Somalia, or Afghanistan or by Christian extremists of the Lord Resistance Army in Uganda, the Irish Republican Army, or the Klan in America.
The major problems we have in this world are political Judaism, political Christianity, and Political Islam. If these three Abrahamic religions were practised as their holy books prescribe, the world would not be this divided.
Having said that, please note that more people have been killed during the Christianisation of Europe, Latin America, and other parts of the world than have been killed in Islamic Jihads.
The bloodiest conflicts in human civilisation, which collectively led to the deaths of over 100 million people, were the two World Wars, which were caused and caught by Christian nations.
In terms of tolerance, Western dominance of the mainstream media has given Islam a bad name. But for over a thousand years, when Jews were either banned, restricted or mistreated in Europe, they always had a place of sanctuary in the Muslim world.
After the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews from Spain, it was the Ottoman Muslims and the Moors of Morocco that gave them asylum. Oh, please fact-check. There is $10,000 in it if you can fault me.
The only reason for which a true Muslim will kill you is if you blaspheme the Name of Allah (SWT), or prophet Muhammad, Salla Allahu Alayhi Wasalaam, or engage in sorcery, murder, etc, which have also historically attracted the death penalty in Christian civilisations.
Muslim Ottomans ruled Jerusalem for 400 years, between 1517 and 1917. Ask yourself how many Christians they killed. They allowed the building of churches in Jerusalem, they endured peaceful religious coexistence, and when Catholic Europe expelled all Jews, the Ottomans and the Moors gave the Jews asylum in Istanbul and Morocco:
A lot of the mistrust between Muslims and Christians started during the Crusades. And again, please fact-check me: the Crusades were initiated and primarily directed and financed by the Catholic Church against Muslims. Muslims were not the aggressors. They were defending themselves.
I am not referring to the conflicts between Byzantium and the Seljuk Turks. I am referring to the Crusades in the Holy Land. And there is another $10,000 in it if you fact-check me and prove me wrong.
And the European Crusaders showed no humanity, sympathy, and decency to Muslims in the Holy Land. Men, women, children and infants were slaughtered. Look, it is a sad fact of history.
Funny enough, as the first Crusaders were coming from France and Germany to the Holy Land, they were perpetrating pogroms against Jews in Europe. If you doubt this, simply research the Rhineland massacres, which were the worst of them.
In contrast, when Saladin fought back and defeated the Crusaders, he showed humanity and mercy by allowing even surrendered Catholic knights to live and have safe passage back to Europe. Again, fact-check me and win $10,000.
No one can put an exact figure on how many indigenous people were killed by the Catholic Spanish conquistadors during the Christianisation of Latin America, but it is in the millions. Again, please fact-check me.
And when you talk of science, even the very foundation of the Internet, which enables you to make this claim, was of Islamic science origin,
The word 'algorithm' is named after Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian Muslim mathematician who invented the discipline of mathematics. Without him, there would be no Internet as we know it.
The word 'algebra' is taken from his book, Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala, which means 'The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing'.
The father of modern surgery, AbĆ« al-QÄsim al-ZahrÄwÄ«, was an Arab Muslim physician, surgeon and chemist.
Some of the scientific tools we use today were the brainchild of កasan Ibn al-Haytham, a Muslim Arab mathematician and physicist who lived over a thousand years ago.
The Astrolabe, which Christopher Columbus used in his famed 1492 journey in which he discovered America, was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan in 1235. That invention made modern navigation possible. But Abi Bakr actually invented it as a way for Muslims to identify the geographical location of Mecca from anywhere on Earth so they could pray in the direction of al Kaaba.
The whole idea of hospitals was invented in Baghdad by Muslims in 805 AD when they founded the Hospital of Baghdad.
The oldest university in the world is the University of Al-Karaouine, founded by Muslims in 859 AD in Fez, Morocco.
I urge you to be fact and research-driven when you make claims like this because they can trigger religious strife unnecessarily.
Please note that no religion is superior to the other, for the precise reason that religion itself is a drug, just like co***ne, monthly salary, or opioids. It is fed to you for free, and then when you are hooked, those who got you addicted to it will start fleecing you using offerings, tithes, first fruit, contributions, levies, etc. You do not need religion. You need faith.
Faith and religion are not interchangeable. They are two different things. Religion is tied to a denominational organisation, while faith is tied to God. There is only one God, but many religions.
Religion wants you to come to a cleric to help you get to God, but faith is a direct line between you and God.
Everybody has faith. To a higher or lower degree. That is why you have dreams, déjà vu, premonition, intuition, and gut instincts you can't explain.
If you want to be fulfilled in this life and relate well with God and humanity, focus on developing your faith instead of enveloping yourself in your religion. And the byproduct of doing that is joy, happiness, and fulfilment.
Reno Omokri
Gospeller. Deep Thinker. . Ruffler of the Feathers of Obidents. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Hodophile. Hollywood Magazine Humanitarian of the Year, 2019. Business Insider Influencer of the Year 2022. 21st Most Talked About Person in Africa, 2024.
