Discussion » Questions » Religion and Spirituality » Which religion has killed the most people in its name, Christianity or Islam?

Which religion has killed the most people in its name, Christianity or Islam?

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Posted - October 19, 2018

Responses


  • Whether it is 20 who are killed or 20,000, both are the work of evil perpetrated by misguided fanatics who commit atrocities in the name of their deity of choice. All are guilty. None have spotless hands. I believe that Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and all, will stand before the Lord one day to face and answer for their deeds. May God have mercy on us all.
      October 19, 2018 8:33 AM MDT
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  • 13395
    Probably Christianity because they got about a 650 year head start on the Muslims and there have been reports of witches still being tortured and killed in Africa by Christians. 
      October 19, 2018 9:21 AM MDT
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  • 1326
    False Christianity bears more to blame for the bloodshed, since they claim to worship God. True Christians don't behave as such.
      October 25, 2018 11:46 PM MDT
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  • 13277
    That amounts to hair-splitting. It hardly mattered to the victims.
      October 25, 2018 11:49 PM MDT
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  • 13395
    All religions are false; world would have been better off if religion never got started at all in the first place. 
    But, 'course it is in the nature of the human bang to create societies (religions) based upon any crazy little ideas that come along the way. 
      October 26, 2018 7:10 AM MDT
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  • 7280
    Not sure---but personally, I haven't killed anyone in the name of anything. 
      October 19, 2018 11:18 AM MDT
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  • 2219
    Communism; oops, that's not a religion. 
      October 19, 2018 12:21 PM MDT
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  • 16779
    It kinda is, militant atheism is one of the tenets of Communism due to a deliberate twisting of the words of Karl Marx.
      October 25, 2018 1:28 AM MDT
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  • 22891
    not sure
      October 19, 2018 12:46 PM MDT
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  • 6023
    Pastafarians

    It's little-known that the crews of the Enola Gay and Bockscar were devout Pastafarians.
    They volunteered for the missions to show the Empire of Japan the power of The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
      October 19, 2018 12:48 PM MDT
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  • 2219

    There are more Christian martyrs in the last century than the entire previous Christian era. Not of course entirely at the hands of Islam. The latter must be catching up fast particularly if you include intra Islamic conflicts. 

    Christians seem largely to have lost the stomach for it. 

      October 19, 2018 1:19 PM MDT
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  • 5391
    Christianity still reigns as the all-time champ. From the countless heretics and pagans murdered for disbelief beginning in the 4th century, to uncountable millions killed in the seven Crusades, to the Inquistion that annihilated the natives of the Western Hemisphere, and the schisms and purges that saw Protestants and witches burned and scourged, to the Holocaust itself (yes, Hitler was a Christian). 

    There is as yet no peer to the Christian legacy  of murder.

    *Joe Stalin (killed an est. 20 million) was educated in Christian seminary, but he was not religious while in power.
      October 19, 2018 4:52 PM MDT
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  • 16779
    Mao Zedong was never religious, his "great leap forward" was responsible for an estimated 45 million deaths, making him the worst mass murderer in human history. Incidentally, the natives of the Western Hemisphere were mostly annihilated some years before the Inquisition arrived - Columbus' ships carried rats, not all of them left with him. Bubonic plague wiped out between 70-90% of a people that had no acquired immunity.
      October 25, 2018 1:35 AM MDT
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  • 5391
    Mao was indeed a prolific murderer, though many millions of his people died of collateral famine, not gunplay. But Mao’s total body count (uncertain as it is) may not measure up to the total amassed by the forces of Christianity (direct and collateral) over the many centuries. I would also argue that Mao doesn’t merit inclusion here, given the particular scope of the Q.

    It wasn’t rats that slaughtered the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs, among others. It wasn’t rats that destroyed the cultures of the plains Indians, stole their lands, decimated their buffalo, brought smallpox, betrayed and enslaved them. White Christian men did these things. If we want to mention the rats, we must give due credit to those who brought them. It wasn’t atheists, Buddhists or Muslims. Columbus was a devout Christian, serving Christian benefactors, as were the rest of the Europeans who invaded the Western Hemisphere in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. It was also Christians who brought African slaves to the West, no count of those who died in this travesty is known, but likely more than a few. This post was edited by Don Barzini at October 26, 2018 11:52 PM MDT
      October 25, 2018 4:39 AM MDT
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  • 44614
    Were those things done for the Christian cause or for simple greed?
      October 25, 2018 7:16 AM MDT
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  • 5391
    We could say some of both. In the context of this question, it doesn’t matter, they weren’t done by Muslims. 
      October 25, 2018 7:43 AM MDT
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  • 16779
    Columbus brought the plague-ridden rats inadvertently - so the disease that decimated the Native Americans cannot be said to have been "killing in the name of religion". It was accidental.
    Those that survived were massacred, true. Had they not been severely weakened and thinned out by the plague, however, they may well have been able to push the invaders right back out again (as the Skraelings did to Erickson's Vikings, and the Maori almost did in New Zealand - England won New Zealand by trickery, not open warfare).
      October 25, 2018 8:22 AM MDT
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  • 5391
    You may want to review the number of western indigenous peoples who died of plague. Compare that to the figures for those dispatched for alleged heresy and blasphemy simply because they didn’t abandon their own traditional beliefs. 

    Had Columbus and his band of European invaders, as well as those who followed, -Christians all-  NOT come to the West, those rats wouldn’t have either. You say accidental, I say collateral. I point to your example of Mao as not individually or purposely killing every person, but causing mass death nonetheless. 

    Columbus ”claimed” the lands he set foot upon in the name of the Spanish King AND (the Christian) God. As did Pizarro and Cortez. Religion was clearly in play, as it was in most matters of that era. This post was edited by Don Barzini at October 26, 2018 11:52 PM MDT
      October 25, 2018 8:36 AM MDT
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  • 6023
    I would claim the major native civilizations of North America died out prior to Columbus expedition ... but likely still due to rats bringing plague.  The Anasazi and Mississippi "Mound Builders" both had large civilizations that ceased around 1600. 

    While there is disputable evidence of pre-Columbus journeys by Knights Templars, there is no evidence they attempted to establish religious outposts or convert natives (let alone kill them for not being Christian). 


      October 25, 2018 8:53 AM MDT
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  • 16779
    The Mi'kmaq people of Newfoundland have a legend about "white medicine men whose totem was a cross". Most likely inspired by Irish monks of St Brendan's order. They brought healing, not pain - but being monastic, the colony died out.
    It's quite possible that Native American lacrosse was developed from Celtic hurling, the similarities between the two sports are striking - and as European wine grapes are not native to the Americas, sonebody must have brought them there before Erickson named the place "Great Vinland".
      October 25, 2018 6:23 PM MDT
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  • I don't know.  It's still happening today, and the numbers increase.  It gets worse before it gets better, from my understanding.
      October 19, 2018 6:59 PM MDT
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  • 1326
    True Christianity has never engaged in bloodshed. It is apostate Christendom that is to blame for the massacres.
      October 25, 2018 12:09 AM MDT
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  • 16779
    By that yardstick, true Islam has never engaged in bloodshed either. I've read the Qur'an and its companion volume, the Ashtiname - Mohammad exhorts the reader to "be good to the People of the Book (ie Christians and Jews). Invite them into your homes and dine with them."
      October 25, 2018 1:43 AM MDT
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  • 1326
    "By that yardstick, true Islam has never engaged in bloodshed either"? I beg to differ. History has shown that both Islam and Christendom, (Not true christianity)are guilty of bloodshed since their existence.
      October 25, 2018 11:28 PM MDT
    1