I mean, other things petered out at the same time. Christian-majority nations became more stable, richer, and industrialized. The Middle East was held back a lot by conflict and colonialism. It's not like the only difference here is 'we're christians and you're not'.
The Ottomans were still a rich nation in the 17-1800s.
I do think my original question was important though, which is, why do you actually draw the line arbitrarily between Christianity and Islam? Why can't both be violent?
loving christ the last thing I want to do right now is write out a TL;DR
The differences between Islam and Christianity are the way they persecute. In the bible, particularly the new testament, when you forget up, you will be judged, burn in hell, etc. You will be sent to hell but it is not the job of a Christian to put you there. In the Quran there is a lot of ordering, where it is the job of the Muslim to carry out Allah's demands. "If you do x you will be put to death". One of the reasons for this is because Christianity, at it's core, is a religion to be ruled over. At it's inception it's followers were enslaved by Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, and Romans so there wasn't a whole lot a christian could do at that time apart from "turn the other cheek" really.
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.
Now what does this have to do with Islam? Islam never had any sort of reformation, there isn't even so much as a new testament in the Quran. It would be like if Christians followed the old testament and only the old testament. On top of changes to the Quran at a fundamental level there needs to be a bigger split off of islam as well.
I would write something else but I lost my train of thought, I'm tired, and quite frankly I hate writing posts longer then 3 sentences. forget you Seventh for making me put effort into a post. You are now dead in my eyes.
