I hate seeing "the religion of peace" bullshit here.

[JDPriestly]

8. "Muhammeds successful military conquests" -- "the early Christians had no power"

The contrast between those two statements says it all.

Muhammed led a violent group or groups of his followers.

The early Christians were not violent.

Muhammed's power may have been the result of his violence.

The Christians' lack of power may have been the result of their non-violence.

What do you think would have happened to his teachings had Muhammed not resorted to violence?

What do you think would have happened to Jesus' teachings if he had resorted to violence?

(According to John, the some or all of the disciples had swords at Gethsemane right before Jesus was arrested, but Jesus told them to put them away. That is the story. Whether it is historically true or not is rather unimportant since there is no historical record that Jesus or his disciples led and armed action (although a couple of Jesus disciples were apparently Zealots).

The historical record is clear that from the beginning, Mohammed himself was involved in violent reprisal against others.

I can't tell whether you are just agreeing with me or minimizing what I am saying so as to detract from its historical significance.

Certainly one aspect of the historical significance of the relatively peaceful nature of early Christianity (and there were two minor reports of violence that I can think of, possibly more, within the early Christian community) is that it took a long time to become a popular religion. It grew very slowly. Another is that the Christian religion adopted violent methods when the Roman government incorporated it at the time of Constantine into itself at least in part.

This is an interesting question.

Another interesting issue is the growth of what we now know as the Roman Catholic Church and the use of violence in the Christian religion.

All of this is history and has only limited relevance to the Christian religion of today although there are Christian churches that advocate for non-violence. Certainly Martin Luther King was an example of a non-violent Christian. Quakers are not always classified as Christian, but they are very non-violent. My father was a Mehodist minister and a pacifist. But in most mainstream Christian churches today, pacifism is not central to the religious dogma but rather a personal belief.

This is a very interesting question. More relevant is how do we encourage all religions to be more pacifistic at this time?