Now where death tolls come into play is that since Christianity is generally more difficult to conquer with (although it can be done) it is generally more difficult to convince the population to massacre millions of people. Islam on the other hand has it written right in the Quran, and not any of that "it's up for interpretation" bullstuff either. There is only so many ways you can interpret "if someone leaves Islam you have to kill them". Even during the islamic golden age when Europe was the equivalent of the modern day middle east the muslims committed far more atrocities in the name of allah and persecuted far more religious minorities, nearly wiping out Zoroastrianism and killing millions of Hindu's.
Now with Christianity there was the central figure of authority, the Pope. Who is where the Catholics went to for interpretation. The pope, who had an obscene amount of power over Christians from sheer influence, crown Charlamagne the "emperor of the romans", often excommunicated political foes, and called for crusades against his enemies. Now this is all stuffty, albeit the crusades were a reconquest since the Eastern Roman Empire was losing vast amounts of territory in Asia Minor but nevertheless these things happened. What changed was with the reformation.
Now you already understand what the reformation is I hope. But on top of a massive amount of Christians leaving the Catholic church the Pope also didn't have much power over the remaining Catholics. During and before the reformation the Church and the Pope had to accept there were many problems with the church and made compromises, significantly weakening it and it's influence. The church no longer had a monopoly over European politics.
But there are literally billions of Muslims who don't lash out violently against apostates or commit jihad. Likewise, there were tons of Christians who ignored all the peace-making stuff in the Bible and flew the banner of Christianity as a military symbol. You can point out the theological differences, but ultimately it's just sort of a fact that most religious people break from what's actually written in scripture. Hell, something like 80% of Jews don't even eat Kosher.
I'm not doubting that there are hard-line theological differences between how Christianity and Islam address issues like apostasy, but it doesn't feel right to generalize entire groups of people just because their book says one thing. There's tons of stuff in the New Testament that encourages loveism, family values, genocide, etc. But those labels don't apply to >99% of Christians.
Even during the islamic golden age when Europe was the equivalent of the modern day middle east the muslims committed far more atrocities in the name of allah and persecuted far more religious minorities, nearly wiping out Zoroastrianism and killing millions of Hindu's.
I still don't think you're exactly answering my question though. We've established that there's been violence directly tied to both Islam and Christianity. You argue that there's much more in Islam, and I have my doubts that the standard here for what counts as 'religious violence' is fair. But let's assume that Islam does have a much higher death toll.
Both death tolls are certainly in the tens of millions but more likely in the hundreds of millions. Why is it that the threshold number for when a religion becomes 'violent' happens to coincidentally fall between the atrocities 'committed by' Christianity and Islam?
I recognize that you're making a theological argument here, but we both know that when people call Islam a "violent religion," what they're really saying is, "Muslims are violent," which warrants a look at the actual numbers rather than just the religious scripture.
