16.2 The Joy of Being Conquered by Islam
My daughter's textbook paragraph said that many people conquered by Islam accepted it and some even liked it. The book also said that Muslim scholars preserved and expanded knowledge.
Muhammad is the name of the Prophet of Islam. According to Islamic texts his first battles were raids against caravans of the Quraysh tribe of the city of Mecca. Later on as his followers grew in number they attacked towns. In order to motivate his followers to conduct these raids he told them that if they died in battle they would go to paradise. He also promised his followers "much booty" (Koran 48:19). One of the raids he promised booty for was against the Jews who lived in the oasis of Khaybar in Saudi Arabia.
Robert Spencer wrote about this in his book The History of Jihad. Spencer wrote:
To fulfill this promise, Muhammad led them against the Khaybar oasis, which was inhabited by Jews... Muhammad and his men offered the fajr prayer, the Islamic dawn prayer, before it was light, and then entered Khaybar itself. The Muslims immediately set out to locate the inhabitants wealth. A Jewish leader of Khaybar, Kinana bin al-Rabi, was brought before Muhammad; Kinana was supposed to have been entrusted with the treasure of the Banu Nadir, Kinana denied knowing where this treasure was, but Muhammad pressed him: "Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?"... Some of the treasure was found. To find the rest, Muhammad gave orders concerning Kinana: "Torture him until you extract what he has."...Muhammad agreed to let the people of Khaybar go into exile, allowing them, as he had the Banu Nadir, to keep as much of their property as they could carry. The prophet of Islam, however, commanded them to leave behind all of their gold and silver....
Does anyone reading this think the inhabitants of Khaybar liked being conquered by the Muslims? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the Muslims liked seizing the booty? What about Muhammad, he got a cut of the wealth seized by the Muslims. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that he liked getting booty as well? Why would God want Muhammad to encourage his followers to make war and steal wealth? Does that sound like something God would want? Isn't stealing and violence wrong? Might Muhammad have been making up to his followers what Allah said, so that he Muhammad could become rich? What about torturing Kinana to get him to say where the Jews stored their wealth? Does that sound like something God would want? If God, the creator of the universe, exists he doesn't need money. If God is a good loving merciful God, he would be against everything Muhammad said he was for.
Many Muslims like to tell everyone that the Israelis took away their land and are oppressing them. They don't want us to remember what happened to the Jews living in the Arab world in places like Saudi Arabia unless they are threatening the Jews. They chanted "Khaybar, Khaybar Ya Yahud. Jaysh Muhammed saufa ya'ud" at a Palestinian demonstration in New York City in July 2014. "The translation is Khaybar Khaybar o Jews, the army of Muhammed shall return. " You can see a short clip from the demonstration below.
Modern day Palestinian Muslims call Jerusalem Al Quds and say it belongs to them. In the year 636 the Muslims conquered Jerusalem. Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, deplored "so much destruction and plunder" and the "incessant outpourings of human blood." He said that the "vengeful and God-hating Saracens...plunder cities, devastate fields, burn down villages, set on fire the holy churches, overturn the sacred monasteries..." Doesn't sound like Sophronius liked being conquered by Islam.
Islam instructs Muslims to tax those they conquer. That tax is called Jizya. Robert Spencer in his book The History of Jihad wrote writes about the testimony of John of Nikou about the Muslim conquest of Egypt and the tax they imposed. Amr ibn al-As was the leader of the Muslim invasion. John of Nikou wrote:
Then the Muslims arrived in Nikiou. There was not one single soldier to resist them. They seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches-men, women and children, sparing nobody...it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed when they occupied the island of Nikiou... Amr's position became stronger from day to day. He levied the tax (jizya)... But it is impossible to describe the lamentable position of the inhabitants of this town, who came to the point of offering their children in exchange for the enormous sums that they had to pay each month.
800 years later Muslim conquered Constantinople. According to Wikipedia
From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. The city became famous for its architectural masterpieces, such as Hagia Sophia, the cathedral of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which served as the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the sacred Imperial Palace where the emperors lived, the Hippodrome, the Golden Gate of the Land Walls, and opulent aristocratic palaces. The University of Constantinople was founded in the fifth century and contained artistic and literary treasures before it was sacked in 1204 and 1453, including its vast Imperial Library which contained the remnants of the Library of Alexandria and had 100,000 volumes.The city was the home of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and guardian of Christendom's holiest relics such as the Crown of thorns and the True Cross.
That all ended with the Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The day before Constantinople fell, the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI said to his officers,
You know well that the hour has come: the enemy of our faith wishes to oppress us even more closely by sea and land with all his engines and skill to attack us with the entire strenth of this siege force, as a snake about to spew its venom; he is in a hurry to devour us, like a savage lion. For this reason I am imploring you to fight like men with brave souls, as you have done from the beginning up to this day, against the enemy of our faith. I hand over to you my glorious, famous, respected, noble city, the shining Queen of cities, our homeland. You know well, my brothers, that we ahve four obligations in common, which force us to prefer death over survival, first our faith and piety; second our homeland; third, the emperor anointed by the Lord and foruth, our relatives and friends.
Sadly for relatives and friends and family the Muslims won.
The Turkish historian Seaddedin wrote:
Having received permission to loot, the soldiers thronged into the city with joyous hearts and there, seizing the possessors and their families, they made the wretched unbelievers weep.
Doesn't sound like the people of Constantinople enjoyed being conquered.
The brutal Muslim jihad against India began in 711 and Muslim attacks on Hindus continued ever since. The latest major massacre of Indians was by Muslim terrorists who landed in Mumbai by boat from Pakistan in 2008. In addition to killing Hindus they sought out the Chabad house in Mumbai and killed friends of mine who lived there.
Robert Spencer described the beginning of Jihad in 711 in his book The History of Jihad. In one city, Daybul, the Muslims faced a force of four thousand Rajputs (Indian warriors) and two to three thousand Brahmins (Hindu priests) defending a Hindu temple. Robert Spencer wrote:
Once victorious, Muhammad ibn Qasim had the temple destroyed and the Brahmins circumcised so as to convert them to Islam. However, seeing that his new converts were resisting, rather than embracing, their new religion, he ordered all of them over the age of seventeen to be executed. The victorious jihadis begain a massacre so intensive that it lasted three days. Young women and children were enslaved.
Century after century Muslim massacres of Hindus continued. Here is Robert Spencer's description of their attack on the city of Thanessar in the 11th century.
Al-Urbi (a Muslim historian) recorded that the leader of Thanessar "was obstinate in his infidelity and denial of God. So the Sultan marched against him with his valiant warriors, for the purpose of planting the standards of Islam and extirpating idolatry.:
Mahmud and his jihadis showed no mercy: "The blood fo the infidels flowed so copiously that the stream was discoloured, notwithstanding its purity, and people were unable to drink it."...
Mahmud and his men went onto Nandana, the capital fo the Kabul Shahi kingdom under King Anandapal. Here again, the jihadis slaughtered the population indiscriminately and destroyed the temples. Al-Utbi recounted: "The Sultan returned in the rear of immense booty, and slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap and men of respectability in their native land were dgraded by becoming slaves of common shopkeepers. But such is the goodness of Allah, who bestows honour on his own religion and degrades infidelity.
Five years later, Mahmud entered Hindustan again and marched toward the fortress of Mahaban. Al-Utbi said taht "the infidels... deserted the fort and tried to cross the foaming river... but many of them were slain, taken or drowned... Nearly fifty thousand men were killed.
By 1500 AD the Muslims had killed 400 million Hindus and Buddhists in India. The Hindus got some protection from the Muslims when the British colonized India. By 1820 most of India was under British control. There still was a lot of violence against Hindus as well as Hindu retaliation against Muslims in addition to rebellion against the British. The British left after partitioning India into the majority Muslims areas of Pakistan and Bangladesh and the majority Hindu area of a smaller India.
Perhaps the British thought partition would bring peace between Muslims and Hindus but Pakistan has become a dangerous nuclear power that instigates terrorism against India. The Hindus who live in Pakistan are persecuted by the Muslims. Even in what is left in India, Hindus are attacked by Muslims.
Here is a short video about the history of Muslims in India.
My daughters school book, World History, said that Muslims preserved and expanded knowledge. That wasn't the case in India and Constantinople where they burned libraries and universities.
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My daughter's text book said that Islam won't coerce subjugated people to be Muslim. What are the laws of Islam regarding subjugated people?
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