Catholicism vs. Islam On Violence, Part 1

In his recent exhortation on evangelization, the Holy Father stated:

Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.

I took exception to the second part of this sentence, as I believe violence is indeed recommended by authentic Islam and a proper reading of the Koran.  A friend, however, challenged me by claiming that although violence may be part of Islam now, it was just as much a part of Catholicism earlier.  In particular he pointed to the spread of Christianity by force during the 15th century and the Age of Exploration.  From this he concluded that Fundamentalist Islam today is simply trying to impose its worldview onto an unbelieving world in just the same way that the Catholic Church tried to impose its worldview onto an unbelieving world by force six centuries ago.  We can, then, hope that Islam will evolve into a peaceful religion eventually in the same way Catholicism did.

I don't believe that Islam and Christianity are in any way parallel in this regard, so I don't accept that argument in either its premise or conclusion.  I'd like to show why here.  This will be a multi-part series of posts, which I will structure as follows:

1. First, dealing with Catholicism:
1. Catholicism from its very beginning was a spiritual religion that did not wish for worldly domination.
1. Evidence for this from Scripture
2. Evidence for this from the early Church Fathers
2. Catholicism has had a troubled relationship with Catholic rulers over the centuries, so that actions of Catholic rulers are often not fairly ascribable to the Catholic religion.
3. The specific history of the Age of Exploration is complicated, and not all actions of Eurpoean kingdoms of the time that are condemned nowadays necessarily deserve condemnation.  Nor are all actions of Popes in that time period indicative of essential Catholicism (unfortunately).
4. Catholic theology of the time actually had the correct view on the relationship between religion and force.
2. Then, dealing with Islam:
1. Islam from its very beginning endorsed the spread of religion by force and the domination of the political sphere by the religious.
1. Evidence for this from the Quran.
2. Evidence for this from early authoritative supplements to the Quran.
2. Modern fundamentalist Islam draws inspiration and justification from these early principles and ideas.

1. Catholicism and Political Domination

1.1 Evidence from Scripture

Christianity is a spiritual religion.  This is true in a number of ways, but there is one very particular way I'd like to highlight now, which is that Christianity has at its foundation a spiritual interpretation of history, especially with regards to the Old Testament and Judaism.  Christianity sees history as a story planned out by God, and the most important event of this story as a divine plot twist.  It goes like this:

Throughout the Old Testament, God built up a relationship with the Jews, making them His chosen people and giving them the Holy Land, the Law and the Propets, the Kingdom of David and the Temple of Solomon.  Because of the sinfulness of the People, the Land and the the Kingdom was taken away from the Jews, but with a promise that the exile would not be forever.  Therefore at the time of Jesus, the major preoccupation of faithful Jews was the expulsion of the Romans and restoration of the Kingdom, and it was expected that this was to happen through the coming of a promised Messiah.

The Christian twist is that the Messiah comes, only to reveal that the Holy Land and the Kingdom of David were never the *real* point after all--that all the things that happened to the Chosen People was preparation for and symbolic of the New Covenant.  The Kingdom of David was not going to be restored, but rather replaced by something incomparably higher and better: the Kingdom of Heaven.  All the worldly expectations of the Jews at the time were turned on their heads and replaced by spiritual expectations, and all the history of the Old Testament was radically re-read in the light of Christ as a foreshadowing and prophecy for the new reality, which is the Church.  So the Old and the New Testaments are read as paralleling each other, with the second including but also transcending the first.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of this doctrine of "transcending parallelism" (which is known traditionally in Catholic doctrine as "typology") to Christianity.  It is everywhere in the New Testament.  To pick a few examples:

1. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus deliberately presenting Himself as a new Moses presenting a new, more perfect law than the ten commandments from a mountain top ("you have heard it said . . . but I say to you . . .") 
2. Parables are given that emphasize the importance of the life to come over the present life (parable of the pearl of great price, the parable of Lazarus and Dives, the parable of the 5 five and 5 foolish virgins, the parable of the tares in the wheat, etc. etc.) 
3. Twelve apostles with no wordly power or majesty are chosen to replace the twelve tribes of Israel and are sent out to spread the Kingdom of God with preaching rather than warfare.
4. Jesus is captured and suffers an apparent humiliating defeat at the hand of pagans and through the intermediate cause of sinful Jewish (thus paralleling the humiliating history of the Jews first in exile and then oppressed by pagans, a point that is often overlooked), only for it to turn out that His Crucifixion is actually His great triumph over evil and the very inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth (and note that he makes clear even during His passion, "My Kingdom is not of this world", thus making the theme explicit).
5. Moving beyond the Gospels, this transcending parallelism is everywhere in Paul.  The pattern of "if it was this-and-such in the Old Covenant, so much the more will some-such-thing be true in the New" is constantly coming up in Paul's writings.
6. The idea that our citizenship is not of this world and that a Christian should therefore live a life higher and more exalted than an ordinary life is also constant in Paul.

Examples could be multiplied ad-infinitum--this really *is* an extremely important concept in Christianity. 

This doctrine has a very important implications for the relationship between the Christian and the world.  Whereas the Jews were seen as attached to a particular political structure they saw as divinely mandated (the Holy Land), the Christians were focused on the "New Jerusalem", a homeland that was in heaven, not in any earthly country.  Consequently, when the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Romans drew nigh, Christians were instructed to leave.  Jersusalem was no longer the focus of religion: Christ was, and Christ could be worshipped anywhere.