A common accusation made against the muslims and islam is that they say “The only reason islam is a world religion is because it was spread by sword” It’s a favorite remark of islamophobes who are fear-mongering about the threat Islam supposedly poses to the western world. But the question is was Islam actually spread by the sword?
The answer to that question is that Islam was never spread by the sword or any kind of force. After the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) Islamic expansions truly began in the early 630s, AD.
Abu Bakr, the first caliph of Islam, gave these armies rules which would seem very constricting by today’s standards of warfare: “Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy’s flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”¹
Abu Bakr made it clear that muslim armies don’t operate by the same principles and restrict their fights to the armies and government of the enemy, not the general populace. Islamic Shari’ah law, based on the example of Abu Bakr, clearly forbids the use of force against anyone except in legitimate cases of war against a clearly defined enemy.
In the example of the conquest of Jerusalem, the caliph at the time, Umar ibn al-Khattab, wrote in the surrender treaty with the patriarchs of city:
He [Umar] has given them an assurance of safety for themselves, for their property, their churches, their crosses, the sick and healthy of the city…Their churches will not be inhabited by Muslims and will not be destroyed…They will not be forcibly converted.²
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which Umar promised to protect when the city came under Muslim control.
No other empire or state at the time had such ideas about religious tolerance. Umar, being a companion of the Prophet, sets a precedent in this treaty about the treatment of conquered peoples in Islamic law. The rest of the conquered lands, in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Persia had similar treaties. Whether the citizens of the conquered lands were Christian, Jew, Sabians, or Zoroastrians, they were allowed to keep their religious traditions. There exists not one example of forced conversion in these early conquests.
Proof of the lack of forced conversion in these areas is the remaining Christian communities in these countries. For the first few centuries after the Muslim conquest, the majority of the population of these areas remained Christian. Slowly, they began to take on Islam as their religion and Arabic as their language. Today, large percentages of Christians remain in Egypt (9%), Syria (10%), Lebanon (39%), and Iraq (3%). If those early Muslim conquests (or even later Muslim rulers) forced conversion on anyone, there would be no Christian communities in those countries. Their existence is proof of Islam not spreading by the sword in these areas.
The Messenger of Mercy, Prophet Muhammad, proclaimed that he would adhere to God’s commandments. And contrary to forcing people to accept Islam, God explicitly prohibited forced conversion: “There is no compulsion. There is no historical evidence suggesting that the Prophet Muhammad acted contrary to the principle that there should be no compulsion in religion. There is not a single recorded instance in the Prophet’s thoroughly documented life of such an incident. Although some early Western historians advanced such claims, more recent studies have shown that conversions did not happen suddenly at the point of the sword, but when people living alongside Muslims gradually and genuinely accepted the faith voluntarily. Indeed, it is as the Orientalist George Sale said: “Whoever says that Islam spread by the power of the sword, his/her word is a pure allegation, because the sword was not even mentioned in many countries and Islam spread there.”
History, logic, objectivity, and scholarly research all reject the notion that the Prophet Muhammad forced his religion on unwilling masses. It was voluntary acceptance and the utter conviction of the truth of Islam that caused mass conversions in many countries. Indonesia, Malaysia, China and several South Asian countries are telling examples of this reality. We can see a glimpse of this today – though in a less dramatic way – in Europe and North America where in those continents Islam is the fastest growing religion.
-AuthoritativeFreedom
Sources: http://lostislamichistory.com/did-islam-spread-by-the-sword/ and also http://mercyprophet.org/mul/node/3331