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: