Waiting For The One Who Never Loved Me..!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Islam Is Spread By The Sword: Preliminary Thoughts

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,

I was contemplating a visit to the British Museum whilst walking back from my friends’ house near Little Venice when a thought regarding the issue of how Islam was spread entered my head. As I am no historian and I have not read enough in the matter (and that I was a Muslim), it was pretty clear that whatever analysis (if it can be called that) or thoughts that I have will be mostly educated guesses, at best. So I was rather reluctant to write anything regarding this issue as I fear that it will probably sound apologetic.
The sands of time

However, when I was thinking about it, it dawned to me that whenever people talk about the issue, the context of the words might not be understood by the various parties that are discussing. It is certainly my experience among my Malaysian friends that they will take offence to such things and will be on the defensive; trying to justify the way that their religion is propagated in this world. This, though natural to most people, usually has the effect of reducing one’s ability to reason independently, as one has a vested interest in proving or disproving a particular thesis. That was what I was thinking, mostly (at 11 pm semi asleep), and I will lay my preliminary thoughts here.
The problem is, in my view, the extent and scope of such things. I think there must be a recognition that:
1. The spread of Islam as a religion and the expansion of the Islamic empire (or Chaliphate)
2. The effect of expansion of an Islamic empire
are different issues that needs to be thought of differently. There is also the problem of scope; what counts as being ’spread by the sword’? Since there are 3 things at hand here, I will try to separate the issues first and then try to pull them back together in a (hopefully) coherent whole. There will be, of course, massive grey areas, but I will not deal with them here, as I do not have the expertise to do so.
The Islamic Caliphate
First, let us see the so-called accusation, word for word. I am not a linguist and will probably need some help with this, so bear with me. ‘Spread’, according to Princeton wordnetweb, among others, has the meaning of ‘distribute or disperse widely’. ‘Sword’ in this sense, I believe has the meaning of force. Hence, the phrase might give the meaning that Islam is distributed or become widespread through the use of force. What counts as force, then? Does it mean violence? Coercion? Military force? Conquest? I think it is fair to say that there are cases in which all the above words are used in some parts of the world to ask people to convert (or revert) to Islam. If that is indeed the case, then what should we count as being ’spread’? It seems to me that the sentence provokes the understanding of an intentional effort from a particular party to ’spread’ the religion by the ’sword’, which, in my view, should be defined. If we cannot agree on what counts as being ‘widespread’ or what counts as being ‘the use of force’ or ‘the sword’, then there will be very little middle ground on which to work with. I, for example, might not think that the battle of Badr or of Uhud as the usage of ‘force’ for the ’spread’ of Islam, but some people might beg to differ. Hence, I do think that if people disagree on what they mean by those words, any meaningful discussion will be very difficult.
This, of course, ties into the second issue that is at hand; that of the spread of Islam and the spread of the Islamic empire. Islam is a religion and therefore it’s spread is most easily measured by the number of believers that it has at one particular time. Hence, if we are to decide whether or not the religion is spread by the sword, the easiest way is to calculate how many people were believers of Islam before the establishment of any Islamic kingdom in that area and the rate at which it was growing. We, of course, have very little (if not none) data on this and hence, it will be very difficult to study it. It is, however, useful to recognise that kings all over the world did convert into Islam and with him most of his subjects. Hence, though it is not conclusive how Islam was spread, this might mean that Islam was not exclusively spread by the sword. That, of course, does not rule out the possibility that it was, to an extent, and that the expansion of the Muslim empire contributed to the spread of Islam.
Swords

That brings me to my third point, the effect of the expansion of the Islamic empire. Being an Islamic empire, one needs to realise that there will be a difference in treatment between Muslims and non Muslims in the empire. The system might be tolerant to the non Muslims, but that does not change the fact that it has different sets of rules for Muslims and non Muslims. That does not mean that the system was wrong at it’s time, as it might seem the most just way of doing things then, but it also does not mean that it was absolutely the correct way to govern by modern standards. If that is indeed the case, then one can argue that there are huge political and sociological reasons for people to convert to Islam, apart from it’s spiritual attraction. The point that I want to make is that we don’t know why people converted to Islam, and to say otherwise is arrogant. I have known people wanting to convert to Islam in order to marry a Muslim, why should the people of old be any different? It might be useful and instructive to study the differences in treatment that the system set up for Muslims and non Muslims, but that will be the extent of the study. One can deduce things, but it will never be conclusive. One should not rule out the fact that perhaps, people converted because they could get some benefits from their conversion - it is suggested that the early Christians in Britain worshipped their pagan gods along side their Christian god - and to disregard that as being irrelevant is a mistake in my view.
Hence, coming back full circle, I do think that though Islam might not have been exclusively spread by the sword, to say that the sword was never used in the spread of Islam is a mistake. What is more, the superstructure known as the Islamic state or Chaliphate and it’s expansion might have contributed significantly to the spreading of Islam, though to what extent we can never know for sure. The discussion, then, would revolve around what is the scope of the ’spreading by force’, which will depend on a lot of other factors.
In the end, I am merely stating the obvious.
Wallahua’lam

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