Shared religious premises make inter-Abrahamic conflicts more virulent than cross-civilizational ones

Evidence

If we look at them in a wider global perspective, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are different branches of the same religion. Their resemblances are far greater than their differences. Compared with the religions of India, of China and of other places, they are as alike as peas in a pod. This of course is what gives particular virulence to the conflicts between them. When Christians and Muslims argued in the Middle Ages and continued into modern times and each said to the other: “You are an infidel and you will burn in hell,” they understood each other perfectly. Such an argument would have been impossible between either a Christian or a Muslim on one side and a Buddhist or a Hindu on the other. They would not have known what they were talking about. Christians and Muslims understood each other because they both meant the same thing. Their heavens are significantly different but their hells are almost identical. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1036

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that resemblance intensifies rather than softens conflict, culminating in the elegant ‘their heavens differ but their hells are almost identical’ — a compact theory of the fiercest hatreds.
• CANDY: ‘Their heavens are significantly different but their hells are almost identical’ is a crisp, shareable line.
• SEED: Angle: the shared-vocabulary paradox — why the closest rivals produce the most ferocious enmity (theological, political, ideological variants: Leninists vs. Trotskyists, Sunni vs. Shia).
• XREF: connects to: Christians and Muslims could ally against pagans over shared monotheism.; Each religion saw the other as a corruption of its own truth. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1039