islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery

Life of Prophet Muhammad and the Birth of Jihad19:4366]. Accordingly, Caliph Omar cleansed the Arabian Peninsula of the Jews and Christians [Bukhari3:39:53].Islam, therefore, accords a choice between conversion to Islam and death to Polytheists (Pagans,idolaters, heathens, animists and atheists etc.), while the Christians and Jews are to be reduced into ahumiliated and heavily exploited subhuman entity. It should be noted that a greater majority of the worldpopulation during Muhammad’s time were Polytheists living in India, China, South and North America, andAfrica. Many of these peoples, notably in India and China, had created valuable and creative civilization sincethe ancient times. With one stroke of the theology of Islam, they were rendered to be either brutally convertedto Islam or violently dispatched to the fire of hell by a rather uncultured and backward people, who had noachievements of note until that time.MUHAMMAD’S JIHAD AND ITS OUTCOMEProphet Muhammad’s Jihad, his struggle or fight in the cause of Allah, obviously consisted of all his actionsand deeds—peaceful, persuasive or military—in the propagation of Islam among the people of Arabia and inextending the geographical domain of Islam. During the course of his prophetic mission, particularly after hisrelocation to Medina whereupon the doctrine of Jihad entered the body-politic of Islam; Prophet Muhammadhad turned his small community of followers into an overpowering military force in the Arabian Peninsula.The most prized outcome of his struggle in the cause of Allah was his founding of a powerful Islamic state,the nascent Islamic caliphate of Medina. During this epoch-making phase of his prophetic career, Muhammadhad evidently created three major paradigms of Jihadi actions as follows:1. Forced conversion of the infidels, particularly the Polytheists.2. Imperialism: the conquest of the lands of the Polytheists, Jews and Christians forestablishing Islamic rule.3. Slavery and slave-trade: for example, the enslavement of the women and children of BanuQurayza and selling some of them by Prophet Muhammad.Prophet Muhammad established these prototypical models of Jihad in strict observance of the divinecommands of Allah. Using the Prophet’s Medina caliphate as the launching-pad, the Islamic holy warriors,the Jihadis, burst out of Arabia after his death for spreading Islam and expanding its political domain to farcorners of the world. In carrying forward the God-ordained campaigns of Jihad, the Muslim holy warriorsmeticulously replicated the three major prophetic models of Jihad paradigms throughout the ages of Islamicdomination.Prophet Muhammad had instilled in his followers such dedication and bravery for fighting in theinterest of Islam that, within a decade of his death, Muslim Jihadis had overrun the great empire of Persia,while making significant and irreversible encroachment into the world’s most powerful empire, theByzantium. Within a century of his death, Islam had created the world’s largest kingdom (caliphate)spreading from Arabia at a whirlwind speed to Transoxiana and Sindh (India) in the East, conquering all ofEgypt and North Africa and had reached the heart of France in Europe. How the three prime prototypicalmodels of Jihadi actions, set forth by Prophet Muhammad, impacted the later history of Islam will bediscussed in the following chapters.52