Spread of Christianity and Islam

¶ … popular religions in the world, Christianity and Islam, both developed from the same area -- the deserts of the Middle East -- but one existed for several centuries prior the beginning of the other. Christianity, the older of the two religions, was started by the followers of Jesus Christ, himself a Jew who lived and died in present day Israel (Latourette, 1975). Most of the early growth of Christianity was among the Jews but as the Jewish leaders began to persecute the early Christians the Christians began to scatter throughout the Roman Empire in order to avoid these persecutions. For the next several hundred years Christianity enjoyed steady growth until Emperor Constantine legally approved the right to practice the religion. Following such recognition, Christianity grew geometrically and, eventually, it became to dominate both the secular and religious affairs on the continent of Europe. When the European powers began to expand their political influence to the New World, Christianity, which had always relied heavily upon the work of missionaries, spread to the New World as well.

Islam began its expansion throughout the world through the efforts of its greatest prophets, Muhammad. Christians view Jesus Christ as being divine but Islam has never considered Muhammad to be anything other than a prophet (Liu, 2011). Like Christianity, Islam developed from humble beginnings as neither Jesus nor Muhammad was a powerful or influential individual and, like Christianity, early followers of Islam were also persecuted. Islam, however, did not grow threw the work of missionaries as Christianity did. Rather, Islam grew through the efforts of its militant forces. Believers in Islam spread their religion through battles fought throughout northern Africa and eastward toward India and Indonesia. In their efforts to convert those who the Islam had conquered, the conquered were offered the option of converting to Islam, paying heavy tributes in the form of taxes, or death. Through these methods, Islam was able to rapidly and efficiently increase its influence throughout Africa and Asia in a very short period of time.

Although Islam is generally characterized by its heavy dependence on militant measures to spread its beliefs, Christianity did not rely exclusively on missionary efforts. Christianity also utilized militant measures of its own in the form of warriors such as Charlemagne and various Crusades in an effort to coerce others to convert to its teachings. One of Christianity's greatest philosophers, St. Augustine, actually developed the idea of a "just" war that provided a moral justification for the efforts of Charlemagne and the Crusaders (Mayr-Harting, 1996). The Inquisitions that occurred throughout Europe and reached their zenith in Spain used the philosophies of Augustine as their justification (Walzer, 2002)