Ammon Bundy speaks at a press conference in Oregon.

Islamists aren’t the only ones with instructions for terrorism in their holy book. Last fall, Dutch pranksters put a cover from a Quran over a Bible and then asked passersby to read aloud homophobic, violent, or sexist passages that violate modern moral sensibilities. The texts shocked people who had never immersed themselves in the Iron Age world of the Bible writers, a world in which daughters can be sold as sexual slaves and most of us deserve the death penalty—you included.

Defenders of Islam point to the atrocities in the Bible and Christian history and argue that Islam looks positively peaceful by contrast. After all, according to one count, the Quran has only 532 cruel or violent passages, while the Bible has 1321. Christians respond that the Bible is longer and so the cruel, violent passages make up a lesser percent of the whole. Besides, they say, the Quran contains more timeless prescriptions of violence […]