Who first branded it so negatively? When did this occur?

I am no scholar of the Quran or Bible, but I am a medieval historian, and the roots of Christians working very hard to associate Islam and specifically the Quran as advocating violence run deep.

The earliest Latin and Greek Christian awareness of Islam (or the movement coalescing into Islam), after all, was of a military expansion or invasion. The 630s Doctrina Iacobi from North Africa (which was meant to convince Jews who have just been forcibly converted to Christianity that, yup, Christianity is The Real Deal) drops in:

And when I arrived in Sykamina, I visited an old man who was learned in the scriptures, and I said to him, “What can you tell me about the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens?” And he said to me, groaning loudly, “He is false, for prophets do not come with a sword and a war-chariot.

This propaganda account is nevertheless fascinating for its recognition that the rising force is a religious/prophetic movement, not just a military invasion. In 8th century England, for example, Bede mentions the violence of the "Saracens" in Gaul as a reason they lost the territory, but he doesn't seem to grasp the religious dimension. (My understanding is that the earliest sources from conquered Syria and Spain follow a similar pattern, at first recognizing the military threat and only later seeing the conquerors-here-to-stay as threatening the religiosity of local Christians.)

But as far as the Quran goes, from the very first Latin translation of the text in the 12th century, Christian scholars strove to portray the text itself as exceptionally violent. Robert of Ketton's translation/paraphrasing of 1143, the Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete, acquires a gloss (notes in the margins that were considered an important part of the text, and copied by future scribes) most likely by another writer.

At some points, the gloss operates like a typical medieval scholastic gloss, wrestling with the meaning of difficult words and phrases! At others, though, it's quite polemic, stressing that Islam is a basket of lies and stressing, exaggerating, the violence advocated by the text. Written in the glow of the First Crusade's success and awareness of a rising Arab threat against the crusader states, is the tilt towards seeing violence in the text a surprise?

Ketton's translation is the most commonly copied and cited one throughout the Middle Ages. But it is not alone, and it is also not alone in trying to portray the Quran as violent. Egidio da Viterbo headed up the production of a 1518 bilingual (Latin/Arabic) translation whose linguistic choices and glosses served to portray the text as exceptionally violent (and, of course, religiously wrong). Note that this translation is produced in a world where the Ottomans are a major threat to Central Europe and the central Mediterranean.

Medieval translations of the Quran, in general, were produced with the primary purpose of allowing more Christian scholars to engage in anti-Islam polemic without having to learn Arabic. They are designed to let Christians "prove" their superiority in a world where Islam is seen as both a military and religious threat. The texts themselves travel in manuscripts with glosses that highlight Islam as a bad, alien, wrong, violent religion. I don't think it should be a surprise that the Middle Ages were already finding or inventing ways to associate Islam with violence, whatever Christians' own culpability.

Major sources: I highly recommend Thomas Burman's Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560.

I'm not going to talk about the Bible, since I don't know much about it. That said, I find the term "advocate more violence" to be rather problematic.

First of all, how do we define it? Let's take, for example:

And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you (2:191)

So, call for violence? Sure. But here's the full verse, plus the ones preceding and proceeding it:

Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors. (2:190)

And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers. (2:191)

And if they cease, then indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. (2:192)

Now we have a different picture; verse 191 states that you are to fight those who fight you - an entirely rational command. And in verse 192, it states to stop when they stopped fighting you. So taken as a whole, it would mean, "don't start fights. But if they did, completely obliterate them. Unless if they surrender, in which case you should stop".

Contextually, this part of the sura' concerns the last pilgrimage of the Prophet and how the Muslims should conduct counter-insurgency in Mecca (one of the stipulations if that those who do not wish to fight should either wait in the hills, go to Abu Sufyan's house, or seek refuge in Masjid al-Haram, as per 191).

Second, what would the implications be for a "call for violence"? Using the example above, the call of violence is juxtaposed on an ongoing military campaign. To which I ask the question: when you're fighting a war, a "call for violence" seem like common sense; you don't defeat your enemies with hugs. So why bother keeping score to start with?

And finally, why do we need to keep score?

Hello everyone,

In this thread, there have been a large number of incorrect, speculative, or otherwise disallowed comments, and as such, they were removed by the mod-team. Especially in light of the topic, which can obviously be a very contentious one, we are keeping a very close eye on this thread. So please refrain from straying from the historical aspects of this question into modern politics, or otherwise posting comments which do not constructively contribute to a civil and academic discussion of the topic at hand. All other comments will be removed without notice.

And of course, please, before you attempt answer the question, keep in mind our rules concerning in-depth and comprehensive responses. Answers that do not meet the standards we ask for will be removed.

Additionally, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with off topic conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!

In another thread on this topic, it was stated that the Koran was distinctly non-violent but it was also suggested that the hadiths weren't so peaceful but when I asked I didn't get any more information.

What do the hadiths say about violence?