Those of us who like to believe that the best of Jewish and Christian tradition support the case for compassionate pacifism can find much support, but also much to undermine this position in the texts that are accepted as representing the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Yes, he said, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you." (John 14:27) but he also said:"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34) He also said some pretty harsh things about turning family members against each other and having to be prepared to turn against your own parents if necessary to follow him. He angrily ejected the money lenders from the Temple (although he did not draw a sword on them or summon the authorities to have them punished, something it is unlikely they would have done anyway).
I like to think this violent language, jarringly at odds with images of lost sheep, loving your enemy as yourself, and giving all to the least among us, reflects the dangerous, subversive times the early followers who wrote this a half century or more after the events in question, and an attempt to explain what must have been a terrifying prospect of arrest and informing on one another as the early Christian leaders were summarily hunted down and executed. In other words, the violence endemic in the Mediterranean world at the time, and the Roman empire in particular when dealing with this restive province of Judea (in which one revolt had been crushed and another was to be crushed even more brutally) managed to creep into the text.
Islam centuries later is also weighed down even more so perhaps by a lot of martial baggage, and it is harder to make a case that the Prophet Mohammed was as absolute a pacifist as Jesus because of course Mohammed was very much a participant in the wars to unify the fractious, polytheistic tribes of the Arabian peninsula into a single, monotheistic entity that could then understand that thanks to the Recitation, they could join their brothers and sisters, members of one of the oldest religions in the region, the Jews (Mohammed and his followers believe that the Recitation that formed the Koran was given directly by Yahweh, translated into Arabic as Allah, to Mohammed and was a continuation of the works of the Torah, not a radical departure from them; indeed, Mary is given a particular place of reverence in the Islamic faith, and Jesus is recognized as a prophet).
But there is much in the Koran that is wholly consistent with the pacific, compassionate message that runs through all Abrahamic traditions at their best (and really all philosophical and religious traditions cross-culturally, most of which are centered on a variant of the Golden Rule). Modern Christians, Muslims, Jews, and others of all faiths or no formal religious affiliation at all have the choice, unprecedented in history, of taking the best of all these ideas, discarding those that were clearly historical artifacts inserted to settle disputes at the time, and look for those resonant, transcendental truths that defy our ability to put words on them but that a small child understands in his heart to be true (and only as adults do we come up with complicated, legalistic reasons to abandon or modify).
We are prisoners in a way of our language and our metaphors, and although they can serve as conduits and heuristic shortcuts to complex arguments, they can also drift away from their original intent or the underlying Platonic forms they so imperfectly attempt to modify. Language helps shape and color ideas since every word and image carries powerful connotations beyond its literal meaning. Indeed, if we are not careful, the cart of language can lead the horse of ideas.
We should hold ourselves to a higher standard than those living in the time these texts were written, since inhabitants of small villages scattered through the agrarian world of Levant had no access to or awareness of the rich tapestry of human cultures and the treasures they created. There was virtually no contact with the far more advanced Chinese culture, for example. Most in the Mediterranean were illiterate, so heavily dependent on the oral tradition, later written down, that although powerful and emotive is highly plastic and subject to drift over time. Someone growing up Jewish or Muslim or Christian in that world and in much of Europe for centuries later might go a lifetime without realizing that most people on the planet were not members of their religion or creed, and many lived happily with no formal religious creed at all (Confucianism in China comes to mind), at least not one that made cosmic, exclusivist, metaphysical claims and threatened eternal punishment for believing something else. In fact, some have argued that the idea of orthodoxy (correct thinking) as opposed to simply orthopraxy (correct behavior, such as following dietary laws and performing ritual sacrifice) is a cultural development in particular of later Christianity, and a dangerous one at that since beliefs and thoughts cannot be directly controlled as behavior can, and the right to force someone to believe something often led logically to the right to torture or kill them if they don't.
Those living in the Middle East 2 millennia ago can be forgiven for this ignorance of other cultures, ideas, and traditions, or the smallness of their place in the deep time not just of human history but of geological time. We, on the other hand, should not pretend not to know the things we now do, and to allow those truths to shape our view of the world.
We have the freedom to choose the best from all the available traditions, and to discard those that are clearly historical artifacts or simply wrong (passages supporting slavery, mutilation, or cruelty toward women all come to mind, as well as many dealing inaccurately with medical conditions that simply were not understood at the time). We have to freedom to work from first principles, to decide what cross-culturally robust principles have stood the test of time (variants of the Golden Rule mostly) and what sort of a world we want to create.
This freedom carries with it tremendous anxiety for some and has perhaps as much risk of self-serving manipulation as does the selective quoting of ancient texts to support one position or another. But that does not mean it is impossible or that whether we realize it or not, we are already well on our way to doing it. The emancipation of slavery, empowerment of women, and end of animal sacrifice are all examples of our ability to move on as a human community. We can continue to grow and evolve. Indeed, I don't see that we have any choice, since we can no more unlearn what we know about the "man behind the curtain" than we can about the fact we live in a heliocentric solar system on a planet millions of times older than any biblical imagination could divine and devoid of any human presence for all but the last fraction of a fraction of a percentage point of its existence.
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