The Life of Mohammad, the Prophet of AllahDinet, Etienne
Religion
The Life of Mohammad, the Prophet of Allah
Dinet, Etienne
Muhammad, Prophet, -632
According to Ibn Abbas, Ibn Jari said: "A man of the Banu Salim ibn
Awf, named Al-Husayn, father of two sons who were Christians, whilst
he was a Mussulman, asked the Prophet: "Ought I not force my children
to embrace Islamism? They will have no other religion than the
Christian religion!" Allah (may He be glorified!) thereupon revealed
for this man the following verse: "_Let there be no compulsion in
Religion._" (THE QUR'AN, II, 257.)
When the Christian ambassadors of the Hijr territory came to see the
Prophet at Al-Madinah, he offered them half of his Mosque so that they
might say their prayers therein. He rose to his feet one day, as a
funeral procession went by, and when he was told that it was only a
Jew's burial, he replied: 'Is it not a soul?' He also said: 'He who
ill-treateth a Jew or a Christian will find me his accuser on the Day
of Judgment. With ungodliness an empire may last; but never with
injustice.'
Notwithstanding all legends, never, beyond the Hijaz, which means the
sacred territory and its vicinity, did Moslems use force to obtain
conversions. The Spanish Christians were never molested on account of
their belief during the eight centuries of Mussulman domination. Many
of them, indeed, occupied the highest posts at the Court of the
Caliphs of Cordova. On the other hand, these same Christians, as soon
as they became conquerors, immediately exterminated all Moslems
without exception. The Jews, who had lived in peace under Arab rule,
were treated in the same way.
In his _Voyage Religieux en Orient_, the Abbé Michon pays homage to
truth by this exclamation: 'It is a sad thing for Christian nations
that religious tolerance, the great law of charity between the
peoples, should have been taught by Mussulmans.' (Quoted by Comte de
Castries, in his book on Islam.)
What about the Armenian massacres? will be alleged against us. Our
answer is that every time they have not been provoked by rebellions
and conspiracies, they are condemned by all true Moslems just in the
same way as the massacre of all the Moslems in Spain is condemned
nowadays by true Christians.
But the Armenian massacres were never the outcome of religious causes,
for never have the disciples of Mohammad thought of imitating the
followers of Torquemada by forcing the Armenians to choose between
conversion and death at the stake. Besides, Moslems do not lean
towards proselytism. Strictly speaking, they have no missionaries, and
if their religion, at the present day, is the one that causes the most
conversions in Africa and Asia, it is, as A. Burdo justly remarks: 'by
a kind of moral endosmose.' (_Les Arabes dans l'Afrique Centrale._)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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