First of all, it is important to understand this: in Islam, "jihad" means
"struggle", and the most intense, important jihad is the internal one in each
believer to live by the precepts of Islam, which do NOT include the murder of
innocent civilians. Violent external jihad, especially the murder of civilians,
has been denounced by ALL mainstream Islamic religious leaders.
Meanwhile, it is also important to remember that Christianity and Judaism
have ALWAYS preached a similar avoidance of violence toward civilians,
especially women and children, while predominantly "Christian" nations have been
responsible for the following murderous atrocities:
- the Crusades;
- the Inquisition;
- pogroms against Eastern European Jews;
- World War I;
- World War II, which included the killing of millions
of civilians not only in Nazi death camps, but in bombing raids on British,
French, Polish, Belgian, Danish, Norwegian, German, Russian, Hungarian,
Austrian, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Korean cities (U.S.
and British firebombs killed more than 25,000 German civilians in Dresden on ONE
NIGHT and then U.S. firebombs killed more than 100,000 Japanese civilians in
Tokyo on ONE NIGHT, and U.S. nuclear weapons killed more than 200,000 civilians
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki );
- the U.S./U.N. War on Korea which killed more than 3
million people (mostly civilians);
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