Just Commentary E-Newsletter, October, 2006
International Movement for a Just World
just-international.org
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SWORD
By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar
It was Albert Einstein who once noted that
it is easier to split the atom than to crack a prejudice.
One such prejudice that is deeply entrenched
in the Western psyche relates to Islam and violence. At the root
of this prejudice is the erroneous belief that Islam had spread
through the sword.
If by this one means that people were threatened
with death unless they embraced the religion, there is very little
historical evidence to support this contention. True, Muslim rulers
and generals conquered territories but often the conquered inhabitants
were allowed to retain their religion or belief. In fact, “
until the middle of the eighth century”, in the words of
the British writer, Karen Armstrong , “Jews and Christians
in the Muslim empire were actively discouraged from conversion
to Islam, as, according to Quranic teaching, they had received
authentic revelations of their own.” In many instances, it
was only after political authority had been securely established
that the masses voluntarily adopted the religion of their new
rulers. This is something that has happened in almost every religion.
After the emperor Asoka became a Buddhist there was a huge influx
of his subjects to his new religion.
In the case of Islam, trade also played
an important role in the spread of the faith especially between
the 8th and 15th centuries. Traders assumed the mantle of missionaries.
Some historians have observed that the honesty and integrity of
these traders attracted a lot of people to their religion. In
Southeast Asia, as in East and West Africa, trade was perhaps
the most effective channel for the propagation of the religion.
An even more influential factor in the spread
of Islam in the early centuries was of course Islamic mysticism
or Sufism. Across North Africa and Central Asia, in various parts
of the Indian sub-continent and most parts of Southeast Asia,
the gentle persuasiveness of Sufi preachers with their message
of virtue and compassion culled from the Qur’an made a huge
impact upon culturally diverse communities. Even today, Sufism
with its emphasis upon universal unity continues to attract large
numbers of non-Muslims in North America and Europe.
Perhaps more than any of these influences,
it is the socio-political and socio-economic environment that
prevailed in various parts of the world in the centuries immediately
after the advent of Islam that explains its rapid and dramatic
growth. In settings dominated by hierarchical and often oppressive
structures, the egalitarian justice offered by Islam came as a
breath of fresh air. As the famous H.G. Wells put it, “ Islam
prevailed because it was the best social and political order the
times could offer. It prevailed because everywhere it found politically
apathetic peoples, robbed, oppressed, bullied, uneducated and
unorganized and it found selfish and unsound governments out of
touch with any people at all. It was the broadest, freshest and
cleanest political idea that had yet come into actual activity
in the world and it offered better terms than any other to the
masses of mankind.”
It was partly because of what it offered
humankind, that even when Muslims were conquered , their conquerors
eventually adopted the religion of the conquered. Thus, the descendants
of Hulagu, the Mongol conqueror of Baghdad in the 13th century,
chose to embrace Islam. In this regard, it is significant that
Islam today is spreading most rapidly in societies where Muslims
are in a minority, in North America and Europe—and not in
Muslim majority countries where they exercise power.
What all this shows is that the allegation
that ‘Islam had spread by the sword’ is an utterly scurrilous
lie perpetrated and perpetuated for a vile purpose. Before we
examine the motive, it should be emphasized that the Qur’an
is perhaps the only religious text that explicitly prohibits coercion
in matters of faith (Chapter 2 :256). It also acknowledges religious
plurality in the oft quoted verse, “ To you your religion;
to me, mine ( Chapter 109 : 6). This is why for a period of time
in the Ottoman empire, if a Muslim coerced a Christian or a Jew
to convert to Islam, he was put to death.
If this is the Islamic position on forced
conversion in theory and in practice, why has the lie about the
sword and violence persisted for so long? The elites in the West
who for the last few centuries have exercised overwhelming influence
on the thinking of the rest of humankind have succeeded in transferring
their terrible guilt about perpetrating unspeakable violence upon
people everywhere through perpetual wars, conquests and persecutions
on to their adversaries. Thus their enemies have become the epitome
and the embodiment of their own violence. Islam and Muslims—
the perennial nemesis of the West— have borne the brunt of
this transference of guilt.
There is no better example of this than
the crusades blessed by the popes. When the crusaders conquered
Jerusalem in 1099, they massacred 30,000 Muslims and Jews. Contrast
this with the compassion and magnanimity of the illustrious Saladin
when he recaptured Jerusalem in 1187. He not only protected the
Christian community—along with the Jews— but also their
places of worship.
And yet in medieval Christian literature
it was the Muslim who was portrayed as a bloodthirsty warrior
eager to embark upon ‘holy wars’. The truth is the term
‘holy war’ does not even belong to Islam. As the Austrian
Catholic philosopher, Hans Koechler points out, “ Literally,
“holy war” is the translation of the Latin term bellum
sanctum which was used to describe a “ crusade “ against
the “Saracens” in the Middle Ages; thus, this notion
was part of the doctrine of the Roman-Catholic Church over many
centuries.”
The crusades are but one gory entry in the
long and sordid catalogue of violent wars and conquests associated
with elites in the West. There was the merciless slaughter of
perhaps 30 million indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australasia
; there was Western colonialism which claimed at least 40 million
lives ; there was the slave trade which robbed 25 million souls
of their freedom; and there was the cruel violence of Apartheid
in South Africa which stripped generations of human beings of
their basic dignity. It is sad that in each and every one of these
colossal catastrophes the Church had some role or other. At the
same time however there were some notable Christian figures who
spoke out against the monumental crimes committed in their name.
If the truth about the violence committed
by Western elites in the past is not widely known, neither is
the general populace today sufficiently cognizant of the terror
unleashed by the contemporary centres of power in the West. The
brutal violence perpetrated by the American war machine in Iraq
or the heinous crimes committed against the defenseless people
of Palestine or Lebanon by that haughty Western outpost in the
Arab world called Israel seldom evoke as much condemnation in
the mainstream media as some desperate attack by a suicide bomber.
Once again, it reveals how the powerful have succeeded in camouflaging
their vile and vicious acts of violence on behalf of oil and land
while transferring the blame on to the victim.
The violence of the Muslim victim of US
occupation of Iraq or of Israeli occupation of Palestine is more
often than not reactive. It is this reactive violence that is
often presented as proof of the ‘inherent Muslim tendency
to resort to violence.’ It is unjust and immoral to equate
the violence of the victim with the violence of the victimizer.
Nonetheless, in the course of reacting to
oppression and subjugation, it is undeniably true that a fringe
within the Muslim community has also indulged in horrendous acts
of violence. They have murdered innocent people in total violation
of unambiguously lucid Islamic principles. Their dastardly deeds
have only helped to reinforce prejudiced stereotypes about Muslim
violence.
There is also violence within Muslim society,
in the past as in the present, which is in no way related to Western
hegemony or to Western injustices in general. Sunni-Shia killings
in Pakistan would be a case in point. Sectarian violence of this
sort is by no means confined to the Muslim world. Intra-community
tensions leading sometimes to bloody conflicts have occurred in
almost every religious community at some point or other. When
such violence erupts within the Muslim community, religious leaders
of every shade should not only condemn it but also mobilize public
opinion against the unpardonable crime of killing innocent lives.
If Muslim religious elites are prepared
to do this, they may help to reduce even if it is only by a tiny
fraction the deep- seated prejudice about Muslim violence.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement
for a Just World (JUST)
