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Justin - thanks for your comment and much respect for stating that which it is not politically correct to state.

From my own perspective, my limited knowledge of Islam comes from the Sufi poet Bahauddin, who is so full of love for his god, nature and other people, that I assumed that the violence I'd heard about in the Quran was a later insertion for political reasons, or simply taken out of context.

In an initial review of the opening stanzas of Chapter 9, I can see the kind of violent language you refer to and it will certainly take me some time reading appropriate commentaries to be able to contextualize this myself.

With regard to my current understanding, just as I recognize the violence in the Old Testament (Sergion gives good examples below), I do not regard Christianity or Judaism as inherently violent (though its followers may have been violent in its name and looked to these scriptures as a source of authority), I tend to see these so called words of God and the faithful as products of a particular time, passed on and edited by worldly beings who may at time full of narrow views and ulterior motives that may obscure the good intentions and potentials of their prophets. Perhaps this is naive.

I also recognize that there are those that appear to be good Christians, who love their God and follow Jesus to the best of their ability, yet support or have supported war, torture, slavery, murder, etc. and somehow justified it for the greater good (examples like the Inquisition, the forced conversion of the inhabitants of the Americas, the Salem Witch Trials, the Klan, murders of abortion doctors, the recent attack at a Planned Parenthood, all come to mind as wrong grasping and wrong action).

Perhaps I'd be better served to turn my attention back to Buddhism, as the I'd like to understand how the violence in Burma can be justified given teachings like those you've quoted.

I believe there is also a history pf Buddhist-sponsored violence in Sri Lanka, more recently and historically in Tibet, between various factions and even directed against the indigenous Bon tradition, some of which Sergio refers to below.

Perhaps understanding how we can take a non-violent religion founded on the understanding of causality and justify violent acts, it may serve me to have sympathy, compassion and patience for those brought up believing in a tradition that, whether in a qualified sense or not, allows for violence and leads them to the same.

Regards

Della Santina1 categorically disclaims Buddhism was ever cause of war, or violent in-fighting between Buddhist traditions. While it's always possible to tap dance around definitions, and to perform a comedy of innocence to deny -or affirm- anything, it is just fair to mention the points of contact between various Buddhist monks and various equivocal situations (support lent to Japanese imperialism; in-fighting in Sri Lanka, Burma, Tibet etc).

"The more detailed version apologized for helping to lend a religious purpose to invasions, colonization and the former empire's destruction of ''20 million precious lives.'' The self-critical account also described how Myoshin-ji members followed Japanese invaders across Asia, ''established branch headquarters and missions'' in conquered areas, even ''conducted fund-raising drives to purchase military aircraft.''

Two other Zen groups -- the Tenryu-ji temple and the Sanbo-kyodan foundation -- and several individual Zen leaders have also issued apologies after receiving Mrs. Buitendijk's letter for war-time complicity, which have appeared in Buddhist publications in Europe and the United States. -...- Mr. Victoria's research has revealed that the founder of Sanbo-kyodan, Mr. Kubota's longtime teacher, was an outspoken militarist and anti-Semite during the war years. His name was Hakuun Yasutani, and he was one of the most significant figures in advancing the popularity of Zen Buddhism in the United States in the 1960's.

In 1999, the New York-based magazine Tricycle published excerpts of a 1943 book that Mr. Victoria had unearthed in which Yasutani expressed his hatred of ''the scheming Jews.'' Actually, the Zen master probably knew few if any Jews, and Mr. Victoria believes he was using them as a stalking horse for liberalism. "

Regarding ALL Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism etc), the picture is equally grim.
As Buddha said
“hard to find are those beings who can claim to be mentally healthy for even a moment except for those [arhats] whose mental cankers are destroyed” (Gautama Buddha, Roga Sutta).

In the IX century BCE, conquering Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II rejoiced in making public the detailed torments he had inflicted upon rebels: innumerable people were flayed or burnt alive; limbs, noses and heads were cut off and so forth in order for the prodigious inventory to be put on public display around tree trunks or pillars as a warning.

This is not to deny that Christianity took a segment of the Graeco-Roman ideological gamut to unprecedented highs (or lows), much as other regimes did with other segments (NSDAP and the fixation with bloodlines; Khmer Rouge and the fixation with rusticity: enforced agricultural toil went on from 3 am to 11 pm). “An order twice inverted is an order restored, perhaps even strengthened as a result of the exercise”:
The LORD will go forth like a warrior -...-"I will lay waste the mountains and hills And wither all their vegetation; I will make the rivers into coastlands And dry up the ponds” (Isaiah 42:13-5).

Archetypal tricksters are ubiquitous in myth(ologie)s:
Divine deceit raises problematic theological questions. J. J. M. Roberts of Princeton Theological Seminary published an article entitled “Does God Lie?” (1988). His conclusion was: sometimes, yes. Following that lead, Nancy Bowen, a graduate student at that seminary completed a dissertation entitled “The Role of YHWH as Deceiver in True and False Prophecy (Old Testament)” (1994). She showed that Near Eastern texts from antiquity recognized the un-trustworthiness of the godsextnote in divine-human communication. The ancients realized that prophecy and divination were not always reliable. Bowen explicitly drew upon analyses of the trickster, and the abstract of her dissertation states that those ancient writings “share a view that YHWH acts as deceiver in a time of social and historical transition and that YHWH’s deception serves as a means to disrupt the present social situation in order to bring about a transformation of the social order.” (Hansen 2001:30).
Now, that trickster trait turns up in deities like Yahweh. Yahweh's a trickster. He lets people build a building, and then because it gets to be three stories high and he's afraid it's going to wreck heaven, he comes down and floods the world. That's a trickster stunt. That's a ridiculous act. We think it quite normal for a deity, while if a human being behaved that way we'd send him to a lunatic asylum. The trickster represents the deity coming through as the destroyer, the disrupter of programs. Yahweh is full of this kind of thing. (Campbell&Boa 1989:89).
Psychopaths are notorious for not answering the question posed them or for answering in a way that seems unresponsive to the question. (Hare 1993:139)
Moses talked to God “mouth to mouth” while Jesus claimed to be the son of God—testimonies that nowadays would certainly result in psychiatric admission. (Polimeni 2012:183).
God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? (Numbers 23:19).
O daughter of Babylon -...-Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks! (Psalm 137:8-9).

In the Book Of Mormon, mythical pre-Hispanic civilizations in the Americas clash; millions are slaughtered:
He saw that there had been slain by the sword already nearly a two million of his people, and he began to sorrow in his heart; yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also their wives and their children. (Ether 15:2).

FWIW