Message for Muslims

“The word missionary, in our Christian acceptance of the term, does not occur in the Quran at all. Besides reference to Muhammad himself as a preacher and Warner, the only other passage that can possibly be taken to refer to missionaries is Al-Imran 3:104:

> “Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good” (Yusif Ali)/ “Let there be people among you who invite to the best religion” (George Sale)

Through the doctrine of abrogation the early peaceful measures were held to have been abrogated by the more war-like verses, and the very last sura revealed is full of exhortations to fight. It is generally, if not universally recognised that Jihad is the distinctive feature of Islam while militant here on earth and this was the stand of the first Khalif, Abu Bakr, who said “When a people leaveth off to fight in the ways of the Lord, the Lord also casteth off that people.”

On the death of Muhammad, the Bedouin tribes fell away from Islam and Medina and Mecca alone remained true to the faith. The Arab tribes, never having been really converted, can hardly be said to have apostatised, and were only gradually brought back by one inducement or another, by kindly treatment, persuasion, and craft, by fear and terror of the sword, and by the prospect of power and wealth. The Arab apologist Al Kindi observed that when the Arabs of the harvestless desert tasted the delicacies of civilisation and revelled in the luxurious palaces of Chosroes they said in their wonder and delight “By Allah, even if we cared not to fight for the cause of God, yet we could not but wish to contend for and enjoy these, leaving distress and hunger henceforth to others.” Yet the material inducements to fight for Islam, great as they were, seem by some to have been of small estimation by many of these ardent missionaries in comparison with the glories and delights of Paradise.

The Conquests of Islam

There is no more astonishing page in the history of the world than that which records the conquests of the Muslims. United for the first time in their history by the bonds of a common religious enthusiasm, and fired with the prospect of plunder the Arabs burst out of their desert lands. The Romans, so lately victorious over their ancient enemies, the Persians, could not stand against this new foe, while the Syrian Arabs mostly threw in their lot with their fellow-countrymen of Arabia. Some of them even, who remained Christians, did not scruple to fight on the side of their compatriots, and in the subsequent campaign in Persia we hear of a Christian chief of the Bani Tay bravely upholding the Arab cause even in the day of defeat at the Bridge of Shaban (643 A.D); while the Bani Namr contributed largely to the victory of Boweib later in the same year. It was plunder and not the propagation of Islam that attracted them to these campaigns.

In 634 the victorious Muslims under Khalid took Damascus. In 636 they utterly defeated the Persians at Kadesia, and drove Heraclius the same year out of Syria. Jerusalem fell the following year. This period of success has been generally assigned with the so-called name “Code of Umar,” regulating the social and political position of Christians. The bitter words of the Quran, “Fight against the people of the Book, until they pay tribute and are humbled,” are now carried out to the letter. The despotism of Islam would not allow Christians to bring up their own children except under the teaching of Muslim masters.

While Khalid carried the Muslim standards to victory in Syria and Persia, an equally able leader Amru, opened the attack on Africa by invading Egypt in 638. Within two years Alexandria was taken, and Egypt became a Muslim dependency like Syria, Chaldea and Persia. In 647 North Africa was invaded, and within thirty years the victorious Muslims had reached the Atlantic Ocean, and their general, Akba, spurring his horse into the sea exclaimed: “Great God, if my course were not stopped by the sea, I would still go on to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of Thy Holy Name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations which refuse to call upon thee” (Gibbon).

Cyprus fell in 648 and Rhodes five years later, while Constantinople was besieged in 668. By the end of the century they had reached the Oxus in Asia, and the invasion of Turkestan with the conquest of Bokhara and Samarkand in the extreme east was coincident with the invasion and conquest of Spain and Lower Gaul in the west. In 716 there was another failed siege of Constantinople. Sixteen years later the battle of Tours set a limit to the Muslim conquests in Western Europe. Crete became Muslim in 823 and Sicily in 878, while in 846 Rome itself was partially sacked by the Arabs, and only saved by the bravery of Leo the Fourth. Though repulsed from Rome the Muslims made good footings at one or two points in Southern Italy, from which they were not finally driven until 1058.

It was not until the eleventh century that the Muslims invaded India under Mahmud of Ghazni. In 1076 the Turks had reached Jerusalem and when the Ottoman Turks took up the sword of Islam from the failing hands of the Seljurk Turks there progress advanced until Suleiman the Magnificent was foiled before the walls of Vienna. It was at the end of the thirteenth century that the Ottoman Turks first became powerful. By the middle of the fourteenth century they had firm footing in Europe. Thrace, Bulgaria, Wallachia, Servia were rapidly and thoroughly conquered, and by the end of the century Greece had become a Turkish province, and in 1453 Constantinople fell sealing the doom of the Eastern Empire. Many of the fairest parts of South-Eastern Europe became parts of the Turkish Empire, which extended on the Adriatic as far as Bosnia, Herzegovnia, and the ancient Illyricum. From there the border then ran through Hungary, midway between Buda and Vienna, and Buda and Cracow, Transylvania and Moldovia, Bessarabia and Podolia. On the Euxine the Turks were in possession of the Crimea. There was a large slice of Europe under Muslim control.