Was Islam Spread by the Sword? Part 2

The follow-up to yesterday's post in which I debunked this video by "AdvocatingIslam" at Youtube. This part refutes the second video, which can be seen here.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

WAS ISLAM SPREAD BY THE SWORD? PART 2

AdvocatingIslam - who I will henceforth call Laura, since that's the name in her Youtube profile - begins the second part of her "Did Islam Spread by the Sword?" series with a remarkably accurate and honest description of the jihad conquests under the first four caliphs: "They would contact the governments and call them to embrace Islam. If they accepted Islam, that was it. If they refused to accept Islam, then they would call on them to pay the jizya, a poll tax paid per person, paid to the Muslim government...If they didn't want to do either of those, then they were going to fight." Laura apparently sees absolutely nothing wrong with this, concentrating instead on the fact that Muhammad supposedly forbade wanton destruction and the killing of non-combatants during these battles. I'm sure she would be considerably more outraged if the West invaded Islamic countries and demanded that Muslims either convert to Christianity or pay money to their invaders. Laura says all this as though it's the most acceptable thing in the world. Wars to impose Islamic law on other peoples? It's OK, apparently!

In any case, she is incorrect that this type of thing only happened under the first four caliphs: it happened for many centuries after that, also. Jihad conquests following the same pattern were waged in North Africa and Europe a hundred years after Muhammad's death, with the Muslims being repelled from Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD. These jihad conquests continued until 1683, when the Muslims were defeated in Vienna, after which Islam entered a period of weakness during which it was incapable of continuing the jihad on the same scale. And then, of course, there is the jihad on the Indian subcontinent, which lasted a millennium, where millions of Hindus were slaughtered without even being given the second option of paying the jizya. For them, it was convert or die. Laura doesn't mention any of this.

"The people, they were HAPPY that the Muslims had come, because they were living under some really corrupt governments...They looked at the Muslims as liberators."

What ahistorical drivel! In fact, Islamic jihad conquests such as those in Egypt were achieved only in the face of fierce resistance. Historical accounts such as those by John of Nikiou describe scenes of brutality, pillage and slaughter by Muslim invaders. The ferocity of the Egyptian Christians' defence resulted in the complete destruction of several towns and cities. We see similar stories in other places such as Armenia and Cilicia. Indeed, the writings of caliph Umar show that the countries under Muslim rule were "covered with troops", in his words. There would be no reason for this if the invaded peoples welcomed the Muslims and lived with them in friendship.

"Many of them converted to Islam. But they didn't all convert, and Islam protected them..."

Laura paints a wondrous, harmonious picture of this "protection", but doesn't explain its true nature. Non-Muslims under Islamic rule - dhimmis - were protected, sure...from the Muslims. But this protection involved a number of humiliating rules and regulations which were designed to make sure that non-Muslims always remembered that they were inferior beings, in line with Qur'an 9:29, which calls for non-Muslims to be fought until they "pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued." Here is an extract from the Pact of Umar, which he concluded with some Christians he invaded:

"We made a condition on ourselves that we will neither erect in our areas a monastery, church, or a sanctuary for a monk, nor restore any place of worship that needs restoration nor use any of them for the purpose of enmity against Muslims. We will not prevent any Muslim from resting in our churches whether they come by day or night...Those Muslims who come as guests, will enjoy boarding and food for three days. We will not...prevent any of our fellows from embracing Islam, if they choose to do so. We will respect Muslims, move from the places we sit in if they choose to sit in them. We will not imitate their clothing, caps, turbans, sandals, hairstyles, speech, nicknames and title names, or ride on saddles, hang swords on the shoulders, collect weapons of any kind or carry these weapons. We will not encrypt our stamps in Arabic, or sell liquor. We will have the front of our hair cut, wear our customary clothes wherever we are, wear belts around our waist, refrain from erecting crosses on the outside of our churches and demonstrating them and our books in public in Muslim fairways and markets. We will not sound the bells in our churches, except discretely, or raise our voices while reciting our holy books inside our churches in the presence of Muslims...These are the conditions that we set against ourselves and followers of our religion in return for safety and protection. If we break any of these promises that we set for your benefit against ourselves, then our Dhimmah (promise of protection) is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion."

This does not sound to me like an idyllic state of protection which the Christians living under it would welcome. Umar was the second caliph. This pact became the basis for Islamic law's treatment of non-Muslims. These kinds of rulings were institutionalised and taught by all the schools of jurisprudence. Muslim states throughout history enforced the oppressive and discriminatory dhimma, almost exactly like the system mandated by Umar, on their non-Muslim populations.

Payment of the jizya was also accompanied by humiliating ceremonies. The jurist an-Nawawi directed: "The infidel who wishes to pay his poll tax must be treated with disdain by the collector; the collector remains seated and the infidel remains standing in front of him, his head bowed and his back bent. The infidel personally must place the money on the scales, while the collector holds him by the beard, and strikes him on both cheeks.” This deliberately demeaning ritual was practised widely, and continued to be enforced even as late as 1950 in countries like Afghanistan.

"In fact, Jews and Christians thrived under the Muslim rule, in Spain and places like that..."

Laura is here peddling the ahistorical myth of peaceful, tolerant Muslim Spain, a multiculturalist paradise where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in perfect harmony, probably singing Kumbaya together, or something. This canard is fiction. Our hostess neglects to mention that if there was peace of a sort between Muslims, Jews and Christians during that epoch, it only existed all the while the People of the Book lived as hated and inferior dhimmis under Islamic hegemony. Persecution of dhimmis was constant in Muslim Spain. Paul Alvarus, a ninth-century Christian in Cordoba, complained of the “unbearable tax” - the jizya - that Spanish Muslims levied on their dhimmi subjects. When the dhimmi laws were relaxed on occasions, this led to riots and murders by angry Muslims who protested about a "breach of sharia". To take just one example: In 1066 in Granada, the appointment of Joseph b. Samuel Naghrela, a Jew, to the position of vizier led to riots by angry Muslims, who complained that this was a breach of the dhimma, which does not allow Jews or Christians to hold positions of authority over Muslims. These riots massacred between three and four thousand Jews and were incited in part by a Muslim poem containing the line, "Many a pious Muslim is in awe of the vilest infidel ape." Muslim Spain was far from the utopian wonderland that modern apologists envision.

"What I find fascinating is that if a Jew or a Christian committed some sort of crime, they weren't tried in Muslims courts, they were tried in their own courts."

This may be true. More worryingly, though, according to the dhimma, the testimony of a dhimmi was deemed inadmissable against that of a Muslim. So if a Muslim and a Christian were in court, only the Muslim had the right to testify. Again, this is discriminatory and explodes the fictional "fairness" of the Islamic system that Laura is trying to peddle here.

"The law of the Muslims wasn't applied to the people...They were allowed to keep their own religious customs."

Not true. From the time of the Pact of Umar onwards, dhimmis were forbidden from ringing church bells, displaying crosses in public places, or publicly celebrating their festivals and feast-days. They were also forbidden from displaying wine or pork, because of Islamic law's prohibitions of these things.

"Today in Egypt there are 14 million Coptic Christians, and there are all these Christians living all over the Middle East, and they will testify that Islam was not spread by the sword, and they were never forced to convert to Islam."

This is a very carefully worded statement that leaves out the persecution Christians have suffered at the hands of Muslims over the years. In Egypt, the Copts have been persecuted by Muslims since the initial invasions of the country. For example, in 704 Abd-al-Aziz, the governor of Egypt and brother of the caliph at the time, fiercely persecuted the Copts by ordering that all crosses should be removed from their churches and that "Muhammad is the Great Apostle of God" be written on all their doors. Mobs attacked and killed many Christians, including monks. Many Christians converted to Islam out of fear or expediency. This persecution of Copts in Egypt continues to this day.

Meanwhile, Christians in the Middle East as a whole are also suffering. Half the Christian population of Iraq has fled since the US invasion of the country in 2003, with some comparing the conditions for Christians in Iraq today unfavourably to life under Saddam Hussein, although even then they had a hard time. Overall, the Christian population of the Middle East has dropped from about 20% in 1900 to less than 2% today, as Christians seek to flee from increasing persecution by Muslim radicals. Their suffering is simply a continuation of the suffering of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands for fourteen centuries.

"People converted to Islam because they saw something in it...Maybe they saw the truth..."

There is no evidence that people mostly converted to Islam because they just realised how swell it was, as many Muslims often claim, and Laura doesn't provide any. There is evidence, however, that people converted because they were suffering under the dhimma and sought a way out. For example, it is recorded that in 1651, four hundred Christians in Cyprus became Muslims because they could not afford to pay the jizya. Similar cases have been recorded elsewhere and throughout history. This was at times such a problem that the Muslim leaders actually forbade dhimmis from converting to Islam because it would destroy the tax base!

So that is the real crux of this whole thing, then. Islamic law technically prohibited forced conversion of Jews and Christians (although "idolaters" such as Hindus and Buddhists evidently were fair game). But what was forcefully imposed on them, again and again, was the Islamic legal system. This relegated them to second-class status, where they suffered persecution and discrimination. This was such an awful way to live that many dhimmis eventually chose to convert, because this was the only pathway to a relatively comfortable life. Apparently, Laura thinks this is just fine. She does not agree with forcing non-Muslims to convert to Islam. But she DOES agree with attacking their lands and forcing them to live under Islamic law, which eventually would lead to their conversion, to spare themselves from the burden of the dhimma and the jizya.

At least she's honest about where she stands, even if she isn't so honest about all the facts.