Muhammad launches his own Crusades. In the following verse, - TopicsExpress

Muhammad launches his own Crusades. In the following verse, Muhammad uses the Arabic word qital (root is q-t-l), which means warring, fighting, or killing: Quran (9:29) - Fight [q-t-l] those among the people of the Book [Christians] who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden and do not profess the true religion, till they pay the poll-tax out of hand and submissively. The two most interesting clauses in this violent verse are (1) People of the Book (Christians in this verse late in Muhammad’s life) are to be attacked if they do not profess the true religion: Islam. This leaves the door wide open for terrorists today to attack and fight Christians because they do not adhere to Islam; (2) Christians must pay a tax for the privilege of living under the protection of Islam—submissively or in humiliation. The historical context of Sura 9:29 finds Muhammad preparing for a military expedition against the Byzantine Empire in 630, two years before his ordinary death of a fever in 632. Indeed, some scholars regard Sura 9 as the last sura to be revealed from on high. Therefore, it sets many policies for Muslims today, and is often interpreted as abrogating or canceling previous verses, even peaceful ones. Muhammad heard a rumor that the Byzantines amassed an army some 700 miles to the north in Tabuk (northern Arabia today) in order to attack Islam, so he led an army of 30,000 holy warriors to counter-strike preemptively. However, the Byzantines failed to materialize, so Muhammad’s belief in the false rumor was misguided and his expedition was fruitless, except he managed to extract (extort) agreements from northern Christian Arab tribes that they would not attack him and his community. An army of 30,000 soldiers from the south must have deeply impressed the northern tribes, so they posed no real threat to Islam. They are the ones who paid the protection tax mentioned in Sura 9:29 (and so do tribes and cities after Muhammad’s death). Therefore, Muhammad’s forced tax was aggressive and hence unjust, not defensive and hence just. Muhammad’s military expedition qualifies as an Islamic Crusade long before the European ones. After all, in 638, only six years after Muhammad’s death, Muslim armies conquer Jerusalem. Today, Muslims should never again complain about European Crusades, unless they first come to grips with their own. For more information on the Muslim Crusades after Muhammad’s death and their atrocities and motives, refer to these articles (one, two). Thus, crusading violence sits at the heart of early Islam—in Muhammad’s life and in his Quran—and beyond, even reaching to today’s western world. Islam is therefore not the religion peace.