Are Muslim and Christian histories morally equivalent?

President Obama seems to think so.

At the National Prayer Breakfast a few days ago he said, “Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Was he right?

Well, the founders of the two religions were quite different when it came to committing “terrible deeds.”

Muhammad was a religious leader who also served as soldier and magistrate. His biographer Ibn Ishaq says he fought in twenty-seven battles. He ordered the death of forty-three opponents, including several opponents who criticized him in verse. After a Jewish tribe was found to be planning with the Meccans a rear attack on the Muslims, Muhammad’s men attacked the Jews. When the tribe surrendered, between 600 and 900 men were beheaded, and the women and children were sold as slaves.  Muhammad apparently signed off on these beheadings and sales into slavery.

In contrast, Jesus refused to lead an army or head a party to resist those who were trying to destroy him. He told Peter not to fight his arrest.

Of course Obama was talking about followers of Jesus and Muhammad, not the founders themselves.  Yet even if we focus on followers, there is a difference in chronology.  Today there are no Christian groups beheading and crucifying and enslaving thousands.  In fact, there are no Christian groups doing any of these things.  That is a huge difference.

And Christians today universally denounce slavery, killing unbelievers just because they are unbelievers, crucifying anyone, and racial segregation.  Yet there are large Muslim groups that endorse almost all, perhaps all, of these things.  Not that all Muslims do, of course.  But far too many groups of Muslims, and far too many Muslims.

That is a second difference.

Obama might say that Christianity has had the advantage of going through the Enlightenment, and Islam has not.

Precisely.  The Enlightenment has helped Christianity to condemn the Inquisition and the worst aspects of the Crusades (they were not entirely bad, for they were in large part defensive wars to help rescue Eastern Christians who were pleading for deliverance of their lands after conquest by Muslims).

Even apart from the Enlightenment, Christianity’s own prophetic and moral teachings have fostered self-correction all along.  Its first theologian Paul denounced racial segregation (“in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek”) and suggested to Philemon that slavery is unworthy of a disciple of Jesus.  Christian leaders denounced slavery, racial discrimination, and murder throughout the history of the faith.

The fact remains that Christianity has gone through a huge self-correction on these things, and Islam has not.  One is hopefully beginning in Islam, but it is a slow beginning.  That is a third difference.

We must recognize that there are millions of moderate Muslims who want a Reformation in Islam.  They denounce beheadings, slavery, crucifixion, forced child marriages, death for changing religions, etc.

But there are millions of Muslims who support these things.  That is a fourth difference.

Bottom line, our president was suggesting a moral equivalence that does not exist.