Islam, Christianity, and “explicit contemporary doctrines of political violence”

There is no Christian equivalent—either for sophistication or influence—to the body of revolutionary political thought that arose among the Sunni Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the middle of the last century, or in Iran in the Age of Khomeini. To say this is not to confuse Islam and Islamism, or to imply that Islam is always and everywhere a violent religion. Nor is it to deny that the scriptural barriers to Christian violence are notoriously easy to breach….But Islam is equipped, as Christianity is not, with explicit contemporary doctrines of political violence. Where Christianity has grown more militant…it has been in a derivative and defensive way.

--Christopher Caldwell for Slate, reviewing Eliza Griswold's The Tenth Parallel.