Benjamin Friedman: prediction

Transcript context

…Is Christianity also the most martial of the major religions? If you look at the United States, people who sign up for the military — they come disproportionately from the South, right? Again, to my knowledge of the major Western religions, I would absolutely not say that. I think just about all religions have a kind of militancy to them in their initial phases. Look at Islam, for example. In the early years of Islam, Muslim forces conquered all of Africa, conquered large parts of Southern Europe, conquered essentially all of Spain. Islamic armies went up as far as, what was it? I’m now trying to remember my high school history. Was it the Battle of Poitiers when the French finally turned around the Muslim advance? Later on, under Suleiman, the Muslim forces again conquered much of Southern Europe, going up as far as the battle at Vienna. I think Islam is certainly a very militaristic religion in its early days. Judaism as well. Again, I mentioned a few minutes ago the foundational myth in the Hebrew Bible of the Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, and what did they do when they fled Egypt? They then conquered Canaan, the Holy Land. So there’s certainly a militaristic strain there. So, the answer is no, I would not particularly point to Christianity as uniquely militaristic, certainly not among Western religions. How do you think having grown up in Louisville influenced the content of your latest book? It’s a more religious area than where many of our elite scholars come from, right?…

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