A Religion of Persuasion not Compulsion

Another thing that has attracted me to Islam is its being a religion of persuasion, not compulsion. Islam does not want believers who only pay lip service to their religion; it wants true worshipers who believe from the bottom of their hearts. It wants its followers to open their eyes and see light willingly and favorably, and to be guided by their own minds and conviction; it does not want them to be compelled to embrace the religion of Allah, against their will for fear of death or punishment :

"If it had been thy Lord's will, they would have all believed, all who are on earth! Wilt thou then compel mankind, against their will, to believe!", [Jonah : 99].

In Islam, compulsion is almost equated with sin, because it runs against the spirit of this religion which carries within it the components of its eternity. Islam is not in want of a drawn sword or any other means of material or moral violence.

"Invite (all) to the Way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching", [The Bee : 125].

That is yet another command, with the same import, from Allah to Mohammed. These and other commands rest on one fundamental principle, or rather they all emanate from one basic source represented here by three words which have made Islam so famous throughout history : "(Let there be) no compulsion in religion", [The Cow : 256].

It is from this source that the early believers quaffed, Muhajirin(3) and Ansar(4) who became the companions of the Prophet and who lived with him. They heard him and saw him handling the daily business of his people with a spirit of tolerance that was his hallmark.

From this same source quaffed al-Faruq(5), the second Orthodox Caliph - may Allah be pleased with him. During his visit to the Church of Resurrection in Al-Qods, he remembered the Word of Allah and the Sunna of His Prophet, and he desisted from praying in that church which was very dear to the hearts of the Christians to preserve it for them, so that it would not be turned into a mosque after him. He granted them his protection  - the Covenant of Omar which is a unique gem in the history of religions.

Omar - may Allah be pleased with him - was acting in accordance with the Book of Allah and the Sunna of His Prophet, and in harmony with the spirit of Islam. In no case was he "cutting a political deal", as do the conquerors in such a situation.

The Covenant of Omar was not an opportunist measure to please the Christians of Al-Qods and to win them over with a view to estranging them intellectually, socially, and religiously from Bizantium as claimed by a group - or rather a large number - of Western historians.

The people in Syria and Egypt - mostly Christians(*) - were Monophysite and in religious and nationalistic disagreement with Bizantium which had terribly persecuted them for this very reason. Bizantium was also engaged in all kinds of harassment, such as confiscating churches and destroying a number of them, deporting or imprisoning many bishops and priests, thus striking terror in the hearts of the Syrians and Egyptians who had adopted the doctrine - or  the heresy - of Christ as being of one nature. For all these reasons, those people who were known in Syria as "Jacobites" said : "The God of Revenge has sent the Arabs to us to deliver us from the Romans".(**)

A great many Christian historians have confirmed that the Jacobites of Syria and the Copts of Egypt felt safe amidst the Muslim Arabs amongst whom they found allies and protectors.

The Covenant of Omar was not the only important historical event of its time, nor was it the first Islamic measure of tolerance in the wake of the Islamic conquests.

Khalid Ibn al-Walid concluded pacts with the people of Damascus, Homs and Hama that guaranteed them the same rights as those secured for the Christians of Al-Qods by the Covenant of Omar. Khalid was the first to have done this(***). The Islamic position is one and the same, because it emanates from one source: the religion of Allah which He revealed to His Prophet as a guide and a mercy to the Worlds.

In 614, The armies of Persia led by Khosrau II scored many victories in their wars against Byzantium, which paved the way for them to Al-Qods. When the Persian armies entered it, "they set out to plunder and destroy the city; then they conquered Damascus whose inhabitants they killed and imprisoned, which struck terror in their hearts. Even the Church of Resurrection in Al-Qods was not spared; its riches and masterpieces, including the real cross, were all stolen"(****).

Later in 628, Hercules, the Byzantine emperor, was able to erase the traces of that defeat when he crushed the Persian armies and retrieved the wood of the Cross. Christians still celebrate this event under the name of "Eid el-salib" (Cross Holy Day).

To appreciate Islam, to give it due respect and to realize the extent to which it is a tolerant and noble religion, a comparison must be drawn between the act of the Persians and what the Muslims did twenty years later.

Had the Crusaders remembered in 1099 Omar's position with regard to the Church of Resurrection  - to mention but this one stand - they would not have soiled their hands, conscience and the reputation of Christianity by breaking into the Mosque of Al-Aqsa, killing hundreds of unarmed Muslims - men, women and children - who sought refuge in it to save their lives. Their only weapon to defend themselves was the Book of the Holy Quran in which the "Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful" is mentioned hundreds of times.

Yet the best manifestations of Islamic tolerance are to be found in Al-Andalus (Arab Spain) the inhabitants of which were of Christian faith when the Muslims conquered Spain. Hundreds of years into Arab-Islamic rule, the inhabitants of Al-Andalus were mostly Christian, among whom lived a Jewish minority. It is again clear that Muslim rulers granted their subjects the freedom of worship and belief.

W. Durant wrote the following : "Throughout history, al-Andalus had enjoyed no just and merciful rule as during the period of Arab rulers: their laws were based on justice and mercy. Minority members used to be tried according to their own laws and by clerks of theirs. Muslim rulers of al-Andalus granted their non-Muslim subjects, whatever their religion, freedom of worship"(*).

The year 1492 witnessed the fall of the last Islamic emirate in Al-Andalus, signaling the end of Islamic rule in Arab Spain, after about eight hundred years during which time Cordoba, Toledo, Grenada, and other cities, held the torch of one of the greatest civilizations that had deeply affected the conscience of time.

Suddenly, Queen Elizabeth of  Castile, a Catholic,  and the wife of Ferdinand,  King of Aragon, issued that horrible decree which stipulated that the Muslims and the Jews - that is, non-Christians - make one of three choices :

1. Convert to Christianity

2. Leave Al-Andalus

3. Face prison or death

The hardships of the Muslims and the Jews began when the blind Spanish fanaticism forced them to make the best of the three worst choices.

Deep down in their souls, the Jews of those days must surely have drawn a comparison between Arab-Islamic tolerance and Christian-Spanish fanaticism, and seen the great difference between the two.

If, throughout history, some Muslim rulers had taken a number of discriminatory and coercive measures against "The People of the Book," they had unknowingly acted in contradiction to the spirit of Islam and in denial of its tolerant traditions, ignoring, or feigning ignorance of, what Allah has enjoined and what He has forbidden, forgetting, or pretending to forget, the Sunna of the Messenger of Allah, and the conduct of the Orthodox Caliphs.