(quote)
"Um... are you trying to say that Christianity *is* universally enlightened and peaceful?"

I kinda had a feeling this "misinterpretation" would surface as it always does. If you had included a direct quote :
"While often enough failed in practice by imperfect humans ,this can *not* take away from the *teachings* , then your above question and follow-up:
(quote)
"No offense, but Christianity in practice is just as brutal and vicious and violent as any other western religion."

...would not have arisen.
BTW: No offense taken. I am certainly all too aware of the *failings* of those whom define themselves as following the *teachings* of Jesus the Christ and is ,no less ,a continual heartbreak .
However within the strict Isreali/Palestinian conflict , which is still considered a potential flashpoint triggring a *nuclear war*, the Christain quotient that collectively comprises what is "The Holy Land" is disproportionately shunted to the side and considered *collateral*at best ( witness the Bethlehem standoff ) in all of that epithet's implications. Both sides consider the Christian part as irrelevent and had best stay out of the way.
Well, that would pretty much leave the people the tribes of the Torah & Quran left to their own devies by their own concious choice, now wouldn't it?

(quote)
"But Jesus, after all, was a product of Judaism, wasn't he? "

Yes, his teachings were the next "evolutionary" advance in the spiritual approach to life that the world was given to work with ,or not .
Yes whom was summarily rejected as such and put to death as the first act of an anti-Christian *final solution* to these new "unorthodox" teachings.
Even the Roman Empire tried, with their original "fascism", a brutal *final solution*. In Rome ultimately "the state" itself was their god. from which Romans drew their cult of identity and sought to impose on the rest of the "conquorable" world ; a cult of *personality* always walks hand-in-hand woith an agnostic fascism that has replayed itself many times in Eurasia and is with us still .

All that said, what I "am" saying is that since both the higher teachings of these tribes has appaently failed to produce anything resembling a Peace worthy of representing their respecting holy teachings it was not "out of place" to suggest an alternative since it was nowhere to be found in evidence ,forget practice , one either side of that great tribal divide that "is" Jerusalem.

Let's say that it is also fair to say the world is yet "waiting" for wither faith to prove that it has the principle of Peace-making and forgiveness in the faith they so vehemently draw their identity from. Let's also say that quoting Old Testament or Jiahdic justifications for the violence kind of drowns out the better angels of those faiths.