Muslims are not generally frank about Islam and Islamic history in public -
it might be dangerous so to be - but here is a confident orthodox Muslim
who
sees nothing to be reticent about in early Muslim history. He sees nothing
to be apologetic about in the aggressive jihad with which Islam colonized
the Middle East:
"The spread of Islam was military. There is a tendency to apologise for
this
and we should not. It is one of the injunctions of the Koran that you must
fight for the spreading of Islam." (Dr Ali Othman, adviser on education to
the UN Relief and Works Agency; in Charis Waddy, "The Muslim Mind", p100.)
Muslims are generally taught that the invasion of the East Roman Empire by
the early Muslims was justified because it released the people from
illegitimate infidel rulers, namely the Byzantine Emperors. Thus Yusuf
al-Qaradhawi argues that the early conquests were:
"In reality a rescue of the wronged people from the tyranny of wrongdoers
and the injustice of oppressors, and a liberation of the people from the
domination of Persian Monarchs and Roman Caesars." ("Priorities of the
Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase", p171)
The implication of these accounts is that contem****ary Islamic aggression
can be justified on exactly the same grounds (Islamists consider all
non-Muslim states to be illegitimate.)
Here is an alternative account of the 'liberation' of the Eastern
Christians, taken from "The Seventh Century in the West Syrian Chronicles"
(ed Andrew Palmer, p166):
"Mu'awiyya [bin Abi Sufyan the governor of Syria after 640] besieged
Caesarea with vigorous assaults, taking captives from the surrounding
country and laying it waste. He sustained the hostilities by night and day
for a long time until he conquered it by the sword. All those in the city,
including the 7,000 Roman sent there to guard it, were put to death. The
city was plundered of vast quantities of gold and silver and then
abandoned
to its grief."
In another city, Euchaita, Mu'a wiyya massacred the inhabitants although
the
city did not resist him:
"The Arabs found the gates of the unhappy city open and the people sitting
aound without the slightest fear. The next moment they were entering it,
plundering it, piling up great mounds of booty. They seized the women, the
boys and the girls to take back home as slaves. Even the city governor was
taken prisoner. Euchaita lay ravaged and deserted, while the Arabs
returned
exulting to their country." (Ibid.)
A young Egyptian was recently imprisoned for several years for re****ting
these facts on a website.
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