title: Both Islam and Christianity Invite to Tolerance: A Commentary on Dirk Baier.
abstract: Baier recently published an interesting original article in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. He compared violent behavior (VB) between Christians and Muslims and concluded that religiosity was not a protecting factor against violence and that Muslim religiosity associated positively with increased VB. We appreciate the author's enormous efforts on researching such an issue of relevance to today's world. However, in our view, the article has methodological weaknesses in terms of participants, instruments, and statistical analyses, which we examine in detail. Therefore, Baier's results should be interpreted more cautiously. Although interpersonal violence may sometimes be observable among Muslims, we do not attribute these to Islam's teachings. In our opinion, both Islam and Christianity invite to tolerance, peace, and friendship. So, the comparison of such differences and the drawing of conclusions that may reflect negatively on specific religious groups need better defined research, taking into consideration other basic variables in different communities.
authors.affiliation: Sina Trauma and Surgery Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran psalamati@tums.ac.ir.
authors.forename: Payman
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Salamati
authors.affiliation: Quran and Hadith University, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Zohrehsadat
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Naji
authors.affiliation: Quran and Hadith University, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Sofia A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Koutlaki
authors.affiliation: Sina Trauma and Surgery Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Vafa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Rahimi-Movaghar
mesh_terms: D002835:Christianity / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007514:Islam / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: community violence; criminology; violent offenders; youth violence