Christianity started in 30 AD when Jesus started His ministry. Through the evangelistic effort of the early disciples, Christianity spread quickly for the next few hundred years through persuasion, cohesion or conquest.
Islam started around 620 AD, Also through evangelistic effort by early believers, Islam spread to many areas including those already entrenched with Christianity. The spread of Islam was also through persuasion, cohesion and conquest.
The collision and rivalry between these 2 religions had resulted in the famous or infamous Crusades when advocates of both religions fought and died. There were 9 main Crusades and many smaller Crusades. Read more about them in Wikipedia.
Finally the Crusades ended. Both sides realized the futility of fighting and the idea of 'Dying for your religion results in great honour and reward in Heaven'.
The ending of the Crusades resulted in the Ottoman Empire and a Middle Eastern region that is predominantly Islamic, even though this region was originally evangelized successfully by the Christian apostles and disciples.
TODAY, I am sad to note that some renegade groups are now conquering regions of Syria and Iraq and committing heinous acts like beheading, rape and torture, to force the people there to adopt their kind of so-called religious beliefs.
But the civilized world had learnt its lesson from the futility of military Crusades fought during the 11th to 13th century. The civilized world is a world of religious freedom. The civilized world would not wage religious wars anymore.
Hence, there is now seemingly no effective solution on how the civilized society could counter uncivilized militant group behavior. What manner of 'crusade' will eliminate this scourge?
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