Religion historian Philip Jenkins decided to compare the brutality quotient of the Quran and the Bible. “Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible,” Jenkins says. Violence in the Quran, he and others say, is largely a defense against attack. “There is a specific kind of warfare laid down in the Bible which we can only call genocide.” It is called herem, and it means total annihilation. In the end, the scholars can agree on one thing: “The DNA of early Judaism, Christianity and Islam code for a lot of violence. Whether they can evolve out of it is another thing altogether.” Complete story.