Purpose of War and Defense in the Military Thought of Islam and Christianity (A Comparative Study)

The nature of the religious and ideological foundations of each political unit is necessary and essential to understand the military thought of them; in this way, knowledge of the military thought of divine religions is very important. Since more than half of the world's people follow the two religions of Islam and Christianity, their military thought is particularly important. Therefore, this study aims to compare the purpose of war and defense in the military thought of Islam and Christianity and define the common points and their differences. The question of the research is “what are the commonality and difference points of the Islam and Christianity in purpose of war and defense in the military thought? This applied-developmental study was conducted with comparative method and using the analytical-descriptive approach. The data were run via MAXQDA software. Findings reveal that the main points of commonality are: confrontation, fight and destruction of disbelief, expansion of religion, achievement of peace and spreading justice. The main points of difference imply that Christianity considers the compulsion to obey and support the religion against non-Christian nations as a reason to justify war, while in Islam defensive jihad is to preserve the religion, and the spread of Islam by war is not allowed to other divine religions. It is concluded that the military thought of Islam and Christianity do not have much difference regarding the purpose of war and defense, and what can be seen on the surface is the difference in the views of their followers