Problems with this study:
1. Tom Anderson used an English version of the Qur’an, which often obscure the martial meaning of words such as jahada, strive or struggle, which is the verbal form of jihad. Translating this word as “strive” is common, but obscures the violent import.
2. The study seems to have simply counted words that suggested violence. There is no hint in this article that Anderson took into account whether or not believers were being commanded to imitate the violent action. In the Bible, they aren’t. There are many passages of the Qur’an, on the other hand, that direct believers to commit violent acts. “Killing and destruction are referenced slightly more often in the New Testament (2.8%) than in the Quran (2.1%),” says this article, but it doesn’t mention that nowhere in the New Testament are Christians told to kill, while Muslims are told to kill many times in the Qur’an (2:191, 4:89, 9:5, 47:4, etc.).
3. There are armed groups of Muslims all over the world today, killing people and justifying their actions by referring to the Qur’an and Sunnah. There are no groups of Jews or Christians killing people and justifying their actions by referring to the Bible. This is not an accident, and warrants consideration in any genuine study of which religion’s book is more violent: mainstream exegesis in all three traditions should have been taken into account.
If it had been, however, Anderson would have found the Islam is much, much more violent than Judaism and Christianity, and that is not an outcome that the Western intelligentsia wants to hear.
“‘Violence more common’ in Bible than Quran, text analysis reveals,” by Samuel Osborne, Independent, February 10, 2016:
An analysis into whether the Quran is more violent than the Bible found killing and destruction occur more frequently in the Christian texts than the Islamic.
Investigating whether the Quran really is more violent than its Judeo-Christian counterparts, software engineer Tom Anderson processed the text of the Holy books to find which contained the most violence.
In a blog post, Mr Anderson explains: “The project was inspired by the ongoing public debate around whether or not terrorism connected with Islamic fundamentalism reflects something inherently and distinctly violent about Islam compared to other major religions.”
Using text analytics software he had developed, named Odin Text, he analysed both the New International Version of both the Old and New Testaments as well as an English-language version of the Quran from 1957.
It took just two minutes for his software to read and analyse the three books.
By categorising words into eight emotions – Joy, Anticipation, Anger, Disgust, Sadness, Surprise, Fear/Anxiety and Trust – the analysis found the Bible scored higher for anger and much lower for trust than the Quran.
Further analysis found the Old Testament was more violent than the New Testament, and more than twice as violent as the Quran.
Mr Anderson summarises: “Of the three texts, the content in the Old Testament appears to be the most violent.
“Killing and destruction are referenced slightly more often in the New Testament (2.8%) than in the Quran (2.1%), but the Old Testament clearly leads—more than twice that of the Quran—in mentions of destruction and killing (5.3%).”…