by Richard Pearman

Created on: April 05, 2011   Last Updated: April 06, 2011

Introduction

Pretty much everybody knows that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are somewhat similar but have a long history of bad, and often bloody relations. Two of them are the world's largest religions. Although there aren't that many Jews, many people feel strongly about them for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Conflicts between them are continuing to this day and are likely to cause a major war, possibly with the use of nuclear weapons, in the near future. Why is this? The problems between them are complex and not easily resolved.

As this is an article, not a book, I'll have to generalize considerably. All three religions have multiple sects and movements, which often have antagonistic and sometimes violent relationships between each other. I'll be concentrating on fairly main-stream beliefs and not dealing with fringe or heretical groups like the Samaritans, the Ba'hai or the Mormons. Nor will I be talking much about Messianics, basically so I don't have to keep adding “except Messianics” clauses all over the place (Messianics mostly agree with Zionist Christians, at least on the issues raised here).

All three religions (and probably all others of any size) have some nominal members. By this I mean people who say they belong to whatever religion but if you question them about their religion's doctrines and what they do to practice it, you'll find that they don't know much and don't do much. These people usually seem quite reasonable, fit in with the culture of their neighbors, and you may well find them easier to get on with than their more devout counterparts. Usually they don't fight people on religious grounds. However such people tend to annoy devout followers, cause trouble by their religious ignorance and lack of interest and there are cases (most notably the troubles in Northern Ireland) where they are violent while devout followers are calling for peace. I will be ignoring them largely to simplify things and because they're hard to pin down. It would take a huge sociological study to figure out what everybody who claims to follow a certain religion believes but you can get a good idea of what the more hard-line followers believe from their scriptures.

I'll use the traditional way to reference the Bible, giving a four letter abbreviation of the book name (unless it has four letters or less in which case the entire name will be given), possibly with a number in front, followed by the chapter and the verse (or just a chapter number

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