So may I ask how you define "peace" and "justice"? Would it be fair to say that I would have a different view of what "peace" and "justice" are than you would? That you, essentially, are only interested in "Islamic peace" and "Islamic justice"?
So force has to be used sometimes. To fight oppression. What does that oppression consist of? Would it consist of, perhaps, polytheism? Is that a form of oppression? Would it consist of, say, refusing to let Muslims preach in non-Muslim countries? Who defines this oppression? Can you think of a single case in the entire history of the Muslim world where Muslims fought non-Muslims, and won, but where Islamic scholars condemned the Muslims for starting a war unjustly where there was no oppression etc?
Greetings
One of the main reason of the Islaamic expansion is to make the Word of Allaah supreme. What this entails is to promote free-thinking, eradicate superstitions and propagate the monotheistic belief that there is no god save Allaah.
For instance, many writers such as Forster praise the Islaamic Expansion for its moral influence in Africa. In fact, he is of the view that every nation that came in contact with Islaam has prospered.
Bosworth-Smith states that through the Islaamic expansion, it removed the dark rituals and practises that was heaped on the inhabitants of Africa:
"We hear of whole tribes laying aside their devil worship, or immemorial fetish, and springing at a bound, as it were, from the very lowest to one of the highest forms of religious belief. Christian travellers, with every wish to think otherwise, have remarked that the Negro who accepts `Mohamedanism' acquires at once a sense of the dignity of human nature not commonly found even among those who have been brought to accept Christianity"
R.B. Smith: Mohammed; op cit; p. 38.
He further adds:
"Nor as to the effects of Islam when first embraced by a Negro tribe, can there, when viewed as a whole, be any reasonable doubt. Polytheism disappears almost instantaneously; sorcery, with its attendant evils, gradually dies away; human sacrifice becomes a thing of the past. The general moral elevation is most marked; the natives begin for the first time in their history to dress, and that neatly. Squalid filth is replaced by some approach to personal cleanliness; hospitality becomes a religious duty; drunkenness, instead of the rule becomes a comparatively rare exception. Though polygamy is allowed by the Koran, it is not common in practice, and, beyond the limits laid down by the Prophet, incontinence is rare; chastity is looked upon as one of the highest, and becomes, in fact, one of the commoner virtues. It is idleness henceforth that degrades, and industry that elevates, instead of the reverse. Offences are henceforth measured by a written code instead of the arbitrary caprice of a chieftain-a step, as every one will admit, of vast importance in the progress of a tribe."
R.B. Smith: Mohammed; op cit; pp. 42-3.
Another reason for the advancement of the expansion was to exterminate oppression and install justice.
To state a few examples, al-Baladhuri (Muslim historian) records that the people of the Syrian city of Hims, both Christians and Jews, proclaimed their reference for Muslim rather than Byzantine Rule, beging the Muslim soldiers to stay when the emperor Heraclius threatened to retake the city. Once the Muslims defeated the Roman army, they welcomed the Muslims with music and dance.
This is supported by a text written by a Christian Syrian (after five centuries of Muslim rule in Syria). He writes:
This is why the God of vengeance, who alone is all-powerful, and changes the empire of mortals as He will, giving it to whomsoever He will, and uplifting the humble beholding the wickedness of the Romans who throughout their dominions, cruelly plundered our churches and our monasteries and condemned us without pity, brought from the region of the south the Muslims, to deliver us through them from the hands of the Romans. And if in truth we have suffered some loss, because the Catholic churches, that had been taken away from us and given to the Chalcedonians, remained in their possession; for when the cities submitted to the Muslims, they assigned to each denomination the churches which they found it to be in possession of (and at that time the great churches of Emessa and that of Harran had been taken away from us); nevertheless it was no slight advantage for us to be delivered from the cruelty of the Romans, their wickedness, their wrath and cruel zeal against us, and to find ourselves at people.
Michael the Elder, Chronique de Michael Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’ Antioche
Another supporting example is the Visigoth persecution.
In 711 CE, an oppressed Christian chief named Julian went to Moosa ibn Nusair, the governor of North Africa, with a plea for help against the tyrannical Christian Visigoth ruler of Spain, Roderick. Moosa responded by sending the young general Taariq bin Ziyad with an army of 7000 troops, burned their fleets, and defeated the 30,000 Visigoths. One of his remarkable speech was after burning his fleet -- "The sea is behind you, and the enemy is ahead of you, and you have no escape but the truth and patience." A new atmosphere of toleration began for the Jews. The Muslims had few men and needed help in every city they conquered to maintain their rule. The Jews helped the Muslims because they represented an opportunity to free themselves from the Visigoths. The Christians and Jews were liberated in Al-Andalusia. The Syrians welcomed the Muslims as their liberators since they liberated from their religious trouble and also relieved them of the burdensome taxes that that were placed on their backs. They praised the Muslims by announcing publically,
"Praise be to God, who delivered us from the unjust Byzantines and put us under the rule of the Muslims".
The mere fact that Muslims did not coerce the inhabitants that they conquered to Islaam is attested by many [non-Muslim] writers.
Lawrence E. Browne writes in the ‘
Prospects of Islaam’:Incidentally these well-established facts dispose of the idea so widely fostered in Christian writings that the Muslims, wherever they went, forced people to accept Islam at the point of the sword.
James Michener states in
‘Islaam: The Misunderstood Religion’:
No other religion in history spread so rapidly as Islaam. The West has widely believed that this surge of religion was made possible by the sword. But no modern scholar accepts this idea, and the Qur’an is explicit in the support of the freedom of conscience.
K. S. Ramakrishna Rao writes in ‘Muhammad: The Prophet of Islaam’:
My problem to write this monograph is easier, because we are not generally fed now on that (distorted) kind of history and much time need not be spent on pointing out our misrepresentations of Islam. The theory of Islam and sword, for instance, is not heard now in any quarter worth the name. The principle of Islam that “there is no compulsion in religion” is well known.
Thomas Carlyle in
‘Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History’:A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the almighty have lived by and died by?...
Thomas Arnold in ‘The Call to Islaam’:
We have never heard about any attempt to compel Non-Muslim parties to adopt Islam or about any organized persecution aiming at exterminating Christianity. If the Caliphs had chosen one of these plans, they would have wiped out Christianity as easily as what happened to Islam during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain; by the same method which Louis XIV followed to make Protestantism a creed whose followers were to be sentenced to death; or with the same ease of keeping the Jews away from Britain for a period of three hundred fifty years.
Kenneth W. Morgan comments on the myths attributed to Islam Islam- The Straight Path: Islam Interpreted by Muslims:
Islam saved the Turks from wrong beliefs and superstitions, strengthened their characters, and taught them the true ideals for mankind. In return the Turks became the most sincere champions of Islam. They strove for its glory and expansion with their schools, learned men, and saints; they lived as persuasive examples of their faith; they spread Islam by pacific means. The expansion of the Turks by the sword was for economic or military purposes and not in order to force Islam on non-Muslims. They used the sword only in the defense of Islam, not for its expansion, but then they defended it with all their strength and when necessary with their lives. The highways and byways of Islamic countries have been strewn with the bodies of heroes who fell in defense of Islam.
Annemarie Schimmel states in Islam: An Introduction that:
The widespread idea that Islam made its way through the world mainly through fire and sword cannot be maintained.
Jonathan P. Berkey writes:
Popular stereotypes about Islam spreading by the sword, and older scholarly assumptions that most of the inhabitants of the Near East converted fairly quickly to the new faith in order to escape the onerous personal and agricultural taxes levied on non-Muslims, both radically misrepresent the complex situation faced by Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and others in the century or two following the initial Muslim conquests. In fact, what came to be known as the dhimmi communities, those monotheists who lived under a pact of protection (dhimma) with the Muslim state, survived and in many cases thrived for many generations.
Muhammad Zafrulla Khan writes:
In modern times, there are Muslims in Indonesia, in Egypt and in Morocco, in Russia, Central Asia and in South and Central Africa. The Iranians, the Pakistanis and the Turks are Muslims; Islam is professed in China, Cyprus and Yugoslavia. One may add that there is a number (not very large, but enough to merit mentioning) of converts to Islam of European or American origin. In the course of the centuries Islam has been able to amalgamate this variety of vastly different types into one group homogeneous at least in the religious aspect. This impressive feat has been achieved by very simple means: not, as is usually asserted, by the power of "fire and the sword," but by the strength of a religious dogma that is not too complicated to be understood by a simple and yet complex enough to satisfy the subtle mind, by virtue of a religious pattern not too difficult to uphold, and by a human attitude appealing to a great variety of men.
Islam and the Modern Age: An Analysis and an Appraisal
Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, Ilse Lichtenstadter; Bookman Associates, 1958
Planhol states:
The expansion of Islam seems therefore to be linked to means of communication; the religion spreads along trade routes and in coastal areas but is hindered by all natural obstacles to social life (mountain ranges and densely forested areas) as well as by the simple inertia of the rural population. . . . The Moslem religion may be thought of as a sort of gigantic octopus, the arms of which reach far down the main roads and project far in front of the animal's actual body
Op cit., p. 104.
H. A. R. Gibb writes after praising the Islaamic Expansion:
…more astonishing than the speed of the conquests was their orderly character. Some destruction there must have been during the years of warfare, but by and large the Muslims, so far from leaving a trail of ruin, led the way to a new integration of peoples and cultures. The structure of law and government which Mohammed had bequeathed to his successors, the Caliphs, proved its value in controlling these Bedouin armies. Islam emerged into the civilized outer world, not as the crude superstition of marauding hordes, but as a moral force that commanded respect and a coherent doctrine that could challenge on their own ground the Christianity of East Rome and the Zoroastrianism of Persia.
He further adds:
To the peoples of the conquered countries the Islamic conquest signified at first little more than a change of masters. There was no breach in the continuity of their life and social institutions, no persecution, no forced conversion.
If Muslims had not conquered, say, Egypt and imposed a jizyah and a kharaj, do you think it would be reasonable to say that Egypt would still be a mainly Christian country? After all Egyptians did not start to convert in large numbers until their last major rebellion failed in the mid-9th century. Would you agree that the main cause of that conversion was, as it happens, the Muslim conquest?
The inhabitants of Egypt did not have any ‘major’ rebellions during the Abbasid Dynasty and nor did they mass-convert after this so-called rebellion, rather, there was a gradual conversion from the advent of Islaam in Egypt to the 9th century. Additionally, the Egyptians welcomed the Muslims as liberators so I really fail to see why they would stage a rebellion.
If the Muslims did not enter Egypt, the Orthodox Church in Constantinople would have ruthlessly persecuted the heretics (i.e. Coptic Christians), and corruption would have increased as pre-Islaamic Egypt was deeply in debt since full bureaucratic control was not established or re-established.
Maududi is clear on this: as he points out, when Muhammed was in Mecca and only preached he coverted very few people. Once he moved to Medina and picked up the sword, he converted thousands. Do you agree that the use of force in Medina was vital to the growth of Islam?
This is fallacious for several reasons as it leaves out the fundamental aspects of the early conversions in Islaam. The Message was confined to his household and close friends until it was ready and commanded by Allaah to proclaim the Message. Once he announced the Message and gained some followers, each clan would deal with its own Muslims by imprisoning, tormenting, beating them; and they would stretch them out on the sun-baked earth of Makkah when the heat was at its height to make them renounce Islaam. Some of the early followers who were the victims of Mahzoom and other clans could not endure what they were made to suffer, and their persecutors reduced them to a state when they could agree to anything. However, what they have recanted was merely on the lips, and not in the heart. This is why the Prophet sent some of his followers to the land of the Abyssinians. Ergo, the reason why people did not enter the Deen in large numbers is ‘cause of the persecution and the malicious lies against the Prophet. Many entered in large numbers after the bloodless conquest in Makkah.
No serfs in Spain I expect. Can we agree that while the Muslims did not use the sword to force Christians and Jews (in any large numbers) to convert, in fact the conversion of any number of Spanish people was determined by the Muslim conquest? No conquest, no converts?
There were serfs in Spain and in fact, they joined Tareek’s army to gain freedom against the Visigoths.
Again, if Muslims did not act upon the plea from the oppressed inhabitants of Visigoth Spain, then clearly corruption would spread and the Visigoths would further persecute its Jewish inhabitants.
By all means. The Muslims converted a few local leaders and then they forced, by means of war, Islam on the rest of the Malay world. Europeans actually turneed up in time to see the last of the Buddhist Javanese states destroyed and just in time to save Bali.
Frankly, I do not appreciate your condescending approach to this topic by portraying Islaam as an ‘evil’ ideology that forced it’s way on the inhabitants through the hands of warlords.
Furthermore, what you have asserted is false. If you want to be acquinted with the Islaamic history in Malaysia, then read
‘A Short History of Malaysia: Linking Easy and West’ by Matheson Hooker under the chapter ‘The influence of Islaam’. It dicusses that Islaam gained many converts primiarly through the dawah of the many Muslim traders [mainly consisting of Chinese Muslims] and the Malay ruler to convert to Islaam: Megat Iskandar Shah.
