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Mohamad Mostafa Nassar
Twitter:@NassarMohamadMR
Anti-Muslim demagoguery relies on the demonization of the Prophet Muhammed peace be upon him who is characterized by Islam-hating liars as being especially violent and warlike.
This propaganda has certainly gained currency in the âJudeo-Zionist-Freemasonic-Christian Westâ.
When it is pointed out that the Biblical prophetsâincluding Moses, Joshua, Samson , Saul , David , among many othersâwere far more violent and warlike (and even engaged in religiously sanctioned genocide ), anti-Muslim pro-Christian ideologues will respond by disregarding or downplaying the Old Testament and will instead focus on the personality of Jesus (âEesa peace be upon him) in the New Testament.
Didnât Jesus preach nonviolence and âloving oneâs enemiesâ? The anti-Muslim ideologues use this idea to assault the religion of Islam with. For example, the Catholic apologist shaytan=Satan Robert Spencer compares Islam to Christianity by juxtaposing carefully selected quotes from Jesus to Islamic texts.
In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Spencer includes a âMuhammed vs Jesusâ section.
He cites the following sayings of Jesus in the Bible:
âLove your enemies and pray for those who persecute youâ
âIf anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other alsoâ
âBlessed are the peacemakersâ
âBlessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercyâ
âBut love your enemies, and do goodâ
These so-called âpeacefulâ verses of the Bible are compared to select battle revealed-Quranic verses. The violent verses of the Bible âdonât countâ and are craftily excluded from the comparison (âthatâs just the Old Testament!â). To tighten the noose, peaceful verses of the Glorious Qurâan are also excluded from the heavily biased analysis, the shaytan=Satan gives his evil reason for that: these âdonât countâ since they are supposedly from when Muhammed was still in Mecca.
To understand the last point, one needs to have a basic understanding of the Prophet Muhammedâs (peace be upon him) biography: he first declared his prophethood in the city of Makkah. Only a very small segment of society accepted him (mostly the weak and poor), whereas the massesâespecially the powerful leaders of the cityânot only rejected him but actively persecuted him.
The chapters of the Qurâan that were revealed during this period are known as the Makkan chapters. Eventually, Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) was commanded by God to fled to the city of Madinah, whose people accepted him as their ruler. He went from persecuted prophet to ruler and commander-in-chief of a fledgling city-state.
The anti-Muslim ideologues claim that the peaceful and tolerant verses of the Qurâan come from when Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) was weak and persecuted in Makkah. According to this islamophobe Baboon, these verses are âcancelledâ, they argue, by the violent-sounding verses in the Medinan chapters.
Robert Spencer writes in his book:
Islamic theology divides the Qurâan into âMeccanâ and âMedinanâ suras [chapters]. The Meccan ones come from the first segment of Muhammedâs career as a prophet, when he simply called the Meccans to Islam. Later, after he fled to Medina, his positions hardened.
The Medinan suras [are]âŚfilled with matters of law and ritualâand exhortations to jihad warfare against unbelievers. The relatively tolerant verses quoted above and others like them generally date from the Meccan period, while those with a more violent and intolerant edge are mostly from Medina.
The Islamophobe deceivers portray Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) as opportunistic:
when he was weak and under the rule of the pagans, he called for peace. Without being in a position of authority, Muhammed was hardly in a position to do otherwise. As soon as he came to power, however, he waged âjihad warfareâ (what a strange phrase!) against them. This is why, they argue, the peaceful verses of the Quran simply âdonât countâ.
For now, however, we will demonstrate that, using such logic, it is equally possible to invalidate the âpeacefulâ sayings of Jesus. While he was a persecuted prophet, Jesus advocated nonviolence and peaceful resistance. He was hardly in a position to do otherwise, right? Once in power, however, this changes dramatically, and violent warfare becomes the new modus operandi.
The Messiah
Just as Prophet Muhammedâs (peace be upon him) biography can be divided into a Makkan and Medinan period, so too can Jesusâs (âEesa peace be upon him) life story be divided into a First and Second Coming. (Likewise, can Mosesâ (Musa peace be upon him) life story be divided into pre- and post-Exodus: prior to Exodus.
Moses (Musa peace be upon him) was largely peaceful, but after Exodus, Moses became the leader of the emerging Jewish stateâand subsequently engaged in holy wars and even genocide against other nations.)
In the First Coming of Jesus (âEesa peace be upon him), only a small segment of society (mostly from the weak and poor) accepted Jesus, whereas the leaders and authorities persecuted him. During this time period, Jesus (âEesa peace be upon him) advised his followers to engage in nonviolent resistance only, perhaps even pacifism.
Jesus advised his followers to âlove your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.â According to the Bible, this didnât stop his Jewish and Roman persecutors from making an attempt to kill him.
Yet, the Second Coming of Jesus (âEesa peace be upon him) is a central theological belief of Christianity as well as Islam. When Jesus (âEesa peace be upon him) returns to earth, the gloves will be off: no longer will he practice non-violence or pacifism. Enemies will be mercilessly killed, not loved. In this manner, Jesus will fulfill the messianic prophecies found in the Bibleâboth in the Old and New Testaments.
To Christians, Jesus is the Messiah (the Greek word âChristâ has the same meaning as the Hebrew word âMessiahâ)âthe same Messiah that the Jews had been in anticipation of.
It is important to understand how the concept of Messiah developed. According to the Bible, Moses (Musa peace be upon him) and his followers fled persecution in Egypt to find refuge in the land of Canaan. They believed that God had bequeathed this land to them, which would come to be known as Israel.
Unfortunately, there were already peoples who lived in Canaan, a problem that Moses (Musa peace be upon him) and his followers rectified via military might.
The native Canaanites were subsequently occupied, exterminated, or run off their ancestral lands. When the natives fought back, the Israelites attributed this to their innate and infernal hatred of the Jewish people.
After ruling the âpromised landâ for a time, the Israelites were themselves conquered by outsiders. The Babylonian Empire captured the Kingdom of Judah and expelled the Jews. Though the Israelites felt no remorse over occupying, slaughtering, and running off the native inhabitants of Canaan, they were mortified when they received similar (albeit milder) treatment. In exile, the Jews prayed for vengeance, as recorded in a divine prayer in the Bible:
Psalm 137:8 O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us.
137:9 Blessed is the one who grabs your babies and smashes them against a rock.
(We can hardly imagine the glee that an Islamophobe devil would feel had such a violent passage, one that blesses those who smash infidel babies against rocks, been found in the Qurâan instead of the Bible.)
It was during the time of exile that the Jewish concept of Messiah was first born. Dutch historian Jona Lendering writes:
It was believed that the Messiah (the Anointed One) would receive Godâs personal help against the enemies of Israel; the Messiah would defeat the Babylonians and reestablish the Jewish state of Israel. Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, fulfilled this role by conquering Babylon and releasing the Jews from exile.
Israel Smith Clare writes:
Prof. Martin Bernal of Cornell University writes:
The first Messiah in the Bible was Cyrus, the king of Persia who released the Jewsâat least those who wanted to leaveâfrom Exile in Babylon.
As for this passage in the Bible:
Psalm 137:8 O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us.
137:9 Blessed is the one who grabs your babies and smashes them against a rock.
Clarkeâs Commentary on the Bible comments on this verse:
The Jews thereby returned to the promised land and rebuilt their nation. According to Jewish tradition, however, this did not last long: the Roman Empire conquered the land, destroyed the Temple, and exiled the Jews once again. As a result, as Lendering puts it, âthe old prophecies [about Messiah] became relevant again.â
Although in Jewish tradition there is a messiah for each generation, there is also the Messiah, which is what is commonly thought of when we hear the word. The Messiah would fulfill the task of destroying all of Israelâs enemies.
JewFaq.org says of the Messiah, which they spell as mashiach (emphasis is ours):
KosherJudaism.org states:
The Second Coming of Christ
Around 4 B.C., a prophet by the name of Jesus was born. He claimed to be the Messiah, and some Jews followed him. The followers of Christ eventually split into numerous sects, and eventually one triumphed over all others. These became what are today known as Christians. As for the majority of Jews, they rejected Jesus. Why?
The Jews rejected (and continue to reject) Jesus because he did not fulfill the prophecies pertaining to the Messiah. How could Jesus be the Messiah when he not only did not defeat or conquer Israelâs enemies, but he never even led an army into a single war? On the contrary, didnât Jesus preach nonviolence and âloving oneâs enemiesâ?
Instead of rejecting these militaristic aspects of the Messiah, Christians attribute them to Jesus during his Second Coming. No longer will Jesus be a weak and persecuted prophet. Instead, he will hold governmental authority, and is depicted as powerful and mighty.
This Jesus will certainly not love his enemies or turn the other cheek to them. In fact, the Bible tells us that Jesus will wage violent warfare against his enemies, and he will mercilessly kill them all.
Many Christians talk about how Jesus Christ will bring peace to the world, once and for all. But they often neglect to mention how this world âpeaceâ is obtained. It is only after slaughtering his opponents and subduing âthe nationsâ (the entire world?) under the foot of the global Christian empire that the world will have âpeaceâ.
Gillâs Exposition of the Entire Bible explains:
In other words, there will be peace for the simple reason that there will be nobody left to fight, all opponents having been slaughtered or subdued. This world âpeaceâ is the same âpeaceâ that any conqueror dreams of: after utterly defeating and conquering all of oneâs neighbors and enemies, what is there left but âpeaceâ, insofar as the non-existence of violence?
In the accidentally insightful words of the Evangelist Wayne Blank:
âPut another way, humans arenât going to have anything left to fight about.â
Following conquest, a foreign occupier would obviously want the occupied peoples to be peaceful, as this would eliminate the nuisance of having to fight off freedom-fighters. The absence of violence would allow the conquering force to effortlessly sustain its occupation.
The events of the Second Coming of Christ are found in the Bible, including the Book of Revelationâwhich is the last book in the New Testament. Jesus will âjudge and wage warâ (Rev. 19:11), his robe will be âdipped in bloodâ (19:13), and he will be accompanied by âarmiesâ (19:14) with which he will âstrike down the nationsâ (19:15).
Furthermore: âincluding âthe Gentilesâ in general and âthe nations that were opposed to himâ in specific.
This will result in the âutter destruction of all his enemiesâ In his second coming [,] he will complete their destruction, when he shall put down all opposing rule, principality, and power.â
Once he conquers the infidels, Jesus âwill rule them with an iron rodâ (19:15). Wayne Blank writes:
Jesus will âwill release the fierce wrath of Godâ (19:15) on them, and âhe shall execute the severest judgment on the opposers of his truthâ.
Because of this, âevery tribe on earth will mourn because of himâ (Rev. 1:7), and they will âexpress the inward terror and horror of their minds, at his appearing; they will fear his resentmentâ. Just as the people of Canaan were terrified by the Israelite war machine, so too would the unbelievers âlook with trembling upon [Jesus]â.
This is repeated in the Gospels, that âthe Son of man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mournâ (Matthew 24:30).
âAll the nations of the world shall wail when he comes to judgmentâ and the enemies of Jesus âshall mourn at the great calamities coming upon themâ .
Far from the meek prophet of the First Coming, Jesus on his return will command a very strong military force that will âdestroy[] every ruler, authority, and powerâ.
Not only is this consistent with the legacy of conquests by the Biblical prophets, it is actually a fulfillment or completion of the task that Moses initiated: holy war and conquest in the name of God.
In First Corinthians (part of the New Testament) it is prophesied that instead of loving his enemies, Christ will subdue and humble them under his feet:
1 Corinthians 15:24 [Jesus] will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power.
15:25 For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet.
Pastor and Biblical scholar Ron Teed explains that Jesus Christ brought âcomfort and salvation at His first comingâ but will bring âvengeance on Godâs enemiesâ during his Second Coming. There are thus âtwo comings of Christ, the first to save, the second to judgeââyet in debates with Muslims it seems that Christians play up the First Coming and completely ignore the Second.
The popular Teed Commentaries explains how âvengeanceâ is for Christâs enemies (the âunbelieversâ) and âcomfortâ only for his followers (the believers):
The Messiah will bring both comfort and
vengeance. He will take vengeance on Godâs enemies and bring comfort to His people. This is a summary of the mission of Christ. He brought comfort and salvation at His first coming during His earthly ministry according to LukeâŚ
However, He said nothing of taking vengeance on Godâs enemies at that time, for that part of his mission will not be fulfilled till He returns triumphantâŚ
[There are] two comings of Christ, the first to save, the second to judge.
In His First coming He did the things mentioned in Isaiah 61:1-2; in His Second Coming He will do the things in verses 2-3. When He returns, He will bring judgment on unbelievers? This will be the day of Godâs âvengeance.â
The ever-popular Evangelical site GotQuestions.org sums it up nicely:
Jesusâ second coming will be exceedingly violent.
Revelation 19:11-21 describes the ultimate war with Christ, the conquering commander who judges and makes war âwith justiceâ (v. 11). Itâs going to be bloody (v. 13) and gory. The birds will eat the flesh of all those who oppose Him (v. 17-18).
He has no compassion upon His enemies, whom He will conquer completely and consign to a âfiery lake of burning sulfurâ (v. 20).
It is an error to say that God never supports a war. Jesus is not a pacifist.
Will the Real Messiah Please Stand Up?
Whereas the Second Coming of Christ is curiously forgotten in debates with Muslims, it is conveniently remembered during debates with Jews. One of the primary (if not the primary) functions of the promised messiah in the Judeo-Christian tradition is, after all, vengeance against Israelâs enemies and global dominance.
Indeed, the entire concept of Messiah emerged following the conquest of Jewish lands with the subjugation and exile of its inhabitants. The Messiah stood as hope for the redemption of Israel as well as revenge against her enemies.
Jewish polemical tracts against Christians reveal to us how militarism is a fundamental characteristic of the Messiah. The Christian response in turn reveal how Jesus Christ will indeed be militaristic (during his Second Coming).
David Klinghoffer, an Orthodox Jewish author, writes in his book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus:
There were certainly those among [Jesusâ] followers who saw him as the promised Messiah. This was natural. The first century produced messiahs the way our own time produces movie stars. There was always a hot new candidate for the role emerging from obscurity, whose glory faded either as he was slaughtered by the Romans or as his followers lost interest when he failed to produce the goods promised by the prophets.
âThe goodsâ refer to the military conquest of Israelâs enemies and world domination. The fact that Jesus failed to produce these âgoodsâ proves that he is not the promised messiah.
Klinghoffer continues:
Let him do what the âson of man,â the promised Messiah, had been advertised as being destined to do from Daniel back through Ezekiel and Isaiah and the rest of the prophets. Let him rule as a monarch, his kingship extending over âall peoples, nations, and languages.â
Let him return the exiles and build the Temple and defeat the oppressors and establish universal peace, as the prophets also saidâŚ
Let Jesus come up with the real messianic goodsâvisible to all rather than requiring us to accept someoneâs assurance that, for example, he was born in Bethlehemâand then weâll take him seriously
This point is reiterated in his book numerous times:
Hearing Jesus preach, a Jew might reasonably have crossed his arms upon his chest and muttered, âHm, intriguing, but letâs see what happens.â After all, the scriptures themselves common-scenically defined a false prophet as someone whose prophecies fail to come true. According to Deuteronomy, this was the chief test of a prophet.
Klinghoffer writes elsewhere:
The Hebrew prophets describe the elements of a messianic scenario that could not easily be overlooked: an ingathering of the Jewish exiles, the reign of a messianic king, a new covenant with the Jews based on a restored commitment to observance of the commandments, a new Temple, the recognition of God by the worldâs peoples. The future Davidic king was expected to radically change the world.
The âradical changeâ involves the âsubjugationâ of the nations:
The Messiah would be a military and political leader. Philo, whose views have sometimes been taken as foreshadowing Christian teachings, is clear on this: âFor âthere shall come forth a manâ (Num. 24:7), says the oracle, and leading his host of war he will subdue great and populous nations.â
The Gospel writers thus faced the challenge that Jesus never raised an army, fought the Romans, returned any Jewish exiles, ruled over any population, or did anything else a king messiah would do.
The subjugated nations would then âprostrateâ themselves to the Messiah and âserveâ him (perpetual servitude?):
The promised royal scion of David, the Messiah, would surely inspire veneration and awe beyond that accorded even to David himselfâŚThe nations will âprostrateâ themselves before God, says one psalm; but so will they âprostrateâ themselves (same Hebrew verb) before the Davidic king , says another psalmâŚ
As Daniel puts it⌠â[The Messiah] was given dominion, honor, kingship, so that all peoples, nations, and languages would serve him.â
Klinghoffer defines the Messiah as he âwho conquers and rules the nations and liberates the Jewsâ and describes him asâ a mighty warriorâ.
He rhetorically asks:
Was there in Jewish tradition any room for a dead Messiah? Didnât Jesusâs death tend to cast doubt on his ability to accomplish all the world-transforming things the Messiah was supposed to do?
Again, the âworld-transforming thingsâ include violent holy war against the heathen nations and their subjugation under his rule. Klinghoffer answers his own question:
But was Jesus a ruler over Israel? On the contrary, the younger Kimchi pointed out, âHe did not govern Israel, but they governed him.â
Christians reply by arguing that Jesus will fulfill these prophecies, just during his Second Coming. The Good News, a Christian magazine with a readership of nearly half a million subscribers, responds to the Jewish criticism by arguing that Jesus returns âa second timeâ as a âconquering Kingâ who will âslay the great armies of those who opposed Himâ.
Jesus will be âthe promised Messiah whom the prophets claimed would rule all nations âwith a rod of ironââ and âall nations would come under His ruleâ.
Klinghoffer, the Orthodox Jewish interlocutor, cries foul:
Christians respond by saying that âthe famously unfulfilled prophecies (for instance, that the messianic era will be one of peace) apply to the second and final act in Jesusâs career, when he returns to earth. This is a convenient and necessary dodge: The Bible itself never speaks of a two-act messianic drama.
The interesting dynamic is thus established: Jews accuse Jesus of not being militaristic enough, and Christian apologists respond by eagerly proving the militaristic nature of Jesus during his Second Coming.
Christians Affirm Militant Old Testament Prophecies
Far from saying âitâs just the Old Testament!â, Christians routinelyâand as a matter of accepted fundamental theologyâuse the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah to validate their belief in Jesusâprophecies that have militaristic overtones. The Book of Isaiah, for example, has numerous prophecies in it that Christians routinely attribute to Jesus Christ.
For example:
Isaiah 35:4 Say to those with fearful hearts, âBe strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.â
Matthew Henryâs commentary of this verse says:
This will be âa day of vengeance, a year of retribution, to uphold Zionâs causeâ (34:8) against the ânations at enmity with the churchâ and âthose found opposing the church of Christâ, which will result in âthe destruction of [the churchâs] enemies.â Likewise do Christians claim that the Book of Micah foretells the Second Coming of Christ:
Micah 15:5 I will execute vengeance in anger and fury on the heathen, such as they have not heard.
One Biblical commentary helpfully explains this verse:
Christ will give his Son either the hearts or necks of his enemies, and make them either his friends or his footstool.
[NassirH, a reader of our website, astutely commented: I suppose this is what JihadWatch writer Roland Shirk meant when he said âIslam is a religion of fear and force, and its adherents can only be at your feet or at your throat.â]
Another Biblical commentary notes:
âHere no mention is made of Mercy, but only of executing vengeance; and that, with wrath and fury.â Yet another states that this is âa prophecy of the final overthrow of all the enemies of pure and undefiled religionâ and that this is âa threatening of vengeance to the Heathensâ .
When we published articles comparing the Judeo-Christian prophets of the Hebrew Bible to the Prophet Muhammed, an anti-Muslim bigot by the name of Percey (formerly known as Cassidy) claimed that the genocides of the Old Testament were ânot supported by Christâs teachings.â
This hardly seems the case, however, when we consider that Jesus will bring to a climax the holy war first initiated by Moses against the enemies of Israel. Jesus will fulfill, not repudiate, Old Testament holy wars against Israelâs foes. In fact, the war will be expanded to heathen nations in general, or at least those that reject Jesus.
Conclusion
We could reproduce violent Christian texts ad nauseum âŚWhat is clear is that the Christian conception of Jesus can very easily be characterized as violent. Prof. Melancthon W. Jacobus writes in A Standard Bible Dictionary:
[Jesus] excluded from the Messiahâs character the main elements of the popular ideal, i.e. that of a conquering hero, who would exalt Israel above the heathen, and through such exclusion He seemed to fail to realize the older Scriptural conception. The failure, however, was only apparent and temporary. For in the second coming in glory He was to achieve this work.
Accordingly, His disciples recognized a two fondness in His Messiahship:
(1) They saw realized in His past life the ideal Servant of Jehovah, the spiritual Messiah, the Christ who teaches and suffers for the people, and
(2) they looked forward to the realization of the Davidic and conquering Messiah in His second coming in power and glory to conquer the nations and reign over them
How then do we reconcile the seemingly peaceful and pacifist sayings of Jesus with the violent and warlike Second Coming of Christ?
There are numerous ways to do this, but perhaps the most convincing is that Jesusâ peaceful and pacifist sayings were directed towards a residentâs personal and local enemiesâusually (but not always) referring to fellow co-religionists.
It did not refer to a governmentâs foreign adversaries, certainly not to heathen nations.
Prof. Richard A. Horsley of the University of Massachusetts argues:
The cluster of sayings keynoted by âlove your enemiesâ pertains neither to external, political enemies nor to the question of nonviolence or nonresistanceâŚThe content of nearly all the sayings indicates a context of local interaction with personal enemies, not of relations with foreign or political foesâŚ
âLove your enemiesâ and the related sayings apparently were understood by [Jesusâ] followersâŚto refer to local social-economic relations, largely within the village community, which was still probably coextensive with the religious community in most casesâŚ[although sometimes referring] to persecutors outside the religious community but still in the local residential communityâand certainly not the national or political enemies.
This is consistent with the ruling given by the Evangelical site
GotQuestions.org, which permits governments to wage war whilst forbidding individuals from âpersonal vendettasâ:
God has allowed for just wars throughout the history of His people. From Abraham to Deborah to David, Godâs people have fought as instruments of judgment from a righteous and holy God. Romans 13:1-4 tells us to submit ourselves to government authorities and that nations have the right to bear the sword against evildoers, both foreign and domestic.
Violence occurs, but we must recognize the difference between holy judgment on sin and our own personal vendettas against those we dislike, which is the inevitable outcome of pride
As for the âturning the other cheekâ passage, it is known that the slap on the cheek that was being referred to here was in that particular culture understood as an insult, not as assault. The passage itself has to do with a person responding to a personal insult and has nothing to do with pacifism. In any case,
The Wiersbe Bible Commentary clarifies: âOf course, He applied this to personal insults, not to groups or nations.â
Some Christians maintain that fighting the enemies on the battlefield does not exclude loving them. This begs the question: how absolutely irrelevant is this strange form of âloveâ for enemies that does not proscribe killing them?
Whatever the reason for the contradiction between loving enemies on the one hand and killing them on the other, the point is that the comparison between a supposedly peaceful Jesus and âviolentâ Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) is not just a vapid oversimplification but pure falsity.
It is only through a very selective and biased analysisâa carefully crafted comparison between the most peaceful sounding verses of the New Testament (a handful of quotes from Jesus that constitute a small fraction of the Bible overall) with the most violent sounding verses of the Quran.
Anything that doesnât fit this agenda simply âdoesnât countâ (and indeed, the anti-Muslim pro-Christian readers will furiously rack their brains to figure out ways to make the violent Jesus verses ânot countâ). The Islamophobic logic is thus: If we exclude all violent verses from the Bible and all the peaceful verses from the Quran, then aha!
See how much more violent the Quran is compared to the Bible! Anti-Muslim Christians scoff at Islam and exalt their religion by informing Muslims of how Jesus, unlike Muhammed, loved his enemies.
Let the Muslims reply back ever so wryly: Jesus loved them so much that he kills them.
Addendum I:
Anti-Muslim Christians often chant âMuhammed was a prophet of war, whereas Jesus was the Prince of Peaceâ. A few points about this are worthy of being mentioned: First, Muhammed never used the title âprophet of warâ nor is this mentioned in the Quran or anywhere else. In fact, one of the most common epithets used for Muhammed, one found in the Quran no less, was âA Mercy to All Humanityâ.
Jesus, on the other hand, will be a âWarrior Kingâ and a âConquering King.â Should it then be âMuhammed is A Mercy to All Humanity, whereas Jesus is the Warrior Kingâ?
As for Jesus being the Prince of Peace, this epithet comes from Isaiah 9:6:
Isaiah 9:6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
9:7 There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity.
The passionate commitment of the LORD of Heavenâs Armies will make this happen.
One Christian website paraphrases this succinctly: âIsraelâs enemies will be destroyed. Peace will flow to the four corners of the earth, as the Prince of Peace rules and reigns.â Again, this is the âpeaceâ that conquerors dream of.
Jesus is the Prince of Peace because he declares war, slaughters, and subjugates all possible enemies to the point where nobody is left to fight, and voila! there is peace!
This brings us to the commonly quoted (and oft-debated) verse of the Bible, in which Jesus says:
Matthew 10:34 Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Most debates focus on whether or not the word âswordâ here is metaphorical or not. Leaving aside the fact that even if this is a metaphor it is certainly a very violent sounding one, it would actually behoove us to focus on the word âpeaceâ in this verse. Jesus told the Jews: âdo not think I have come to bring peace on earthâ as a way to explain his failure to produce âthe goodsâ: âthe Jews believed that when the Messiah comes, there would be a time of world peace.â Naturally, this world âpeaceâ would be brought about through war.
Of course, in his Second Coming will Jesus bring this âpeace on earthâ (and by âpeaceâ, what is meant is war, slaughter, and subjugation). As we can see, this verse confirms the militant nature of the Messiah (and thus Jesus), regardless of if it is metaphorical or not.
Addendum II:
Here is another hotly debated verse, in which Jesus says:
Luke 19:27 But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and kill them in my presence.
Robert Spencer dismisses this verse, saying:
âThese are the words of a king in a parable.â Yes, this was a parable that Jesus told his disciples. But what was his intention in narrating this parable? Gillâs Explanation to the Entire Bible explains that it was to explain what will happen to the Jews âwhen Christ shall come a second timeâ:
Jesus will âdestroy the Jewish nationâ for rejecting him âand then all other enemies will be slain and destroyedâ as well.
Death and destruction will be the fate of whoever does not accept Jesusâ reign as Warrior King.
This was hardly an innocuous story. It reminds us of a scene in the movie Gladiator when the evil Roman emperor Commodus tells his nephew a story about an âemperorâ who was betrayed by his sister (âhis own bloodâ) and how he âstruck downâ her son as revenge. (Watch it here.) The story was a thinly veiled threat, as was Jesusâ parable.
One can only hardly imagine how Islamophobes like Robert Spencer would react had it been the Prophet Muhammed who had used such a violent parable, threatening to return to earth in order to âslayâ anyone who âdid not want me to reign over themâ! This would certainly âcountâ since all violence in the Quran âcountsâ whereas whatever is peaceful in the Quran âdoesnât countâ, and whatever is violent in the Bible âdoesnât countâ and whatever is peaceful in the Bible âcountsâ. Heads I win, tails you lose.
Allah knows Best.