Check below answers in case you are looking for other related questions:

We as muslims say that Islam was not spread by sword but by love, Ikhlaq, by logic, by the Pious people etc. However its written in the books that Sahaba during their wars used to given three options to non believers.

Mu' meneen Brothers and Sisters,

As Salaam Aleikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.  (May Allah's Peace, Mercy and Blessings be upon all of you)

 

One of our brothers/sisters has asked this question:

Brother Burhan, Salam O`Alaikum


We as muslims say that Islam was not spread by sword but by love, Ikhlaq, by logic, by the Pious people etc. However its written in the books that Sahaba during their wars used to given three options to non believers. 1. Accept Islam and you will be other brothers and you continue ruling your lands 2. If you don`t accept Islam then give Jizia and come under our protection 3. If both the conditions are not accetable then be ready for war.


My question is what if today any force of non believers come to my country and tell me 1. Accept Christianity and be our brothers and and you continue ruling your lands 2. If you don`t accept Christianity then give Jizia and come under our protection 3. If both the conditions are not accetable then be ready for war.


None of these 3 conditions are acceptable to me. I want to remain a Muslim, be independent and don`t want to indulde into a war. This attitude of non believers is not acceptable to me. But didn`t we also adopt the same attitude. I am little confused by this analogy, would you be kind enough to address this issue.


Love,

(There may be some grammatical and spelling errors in the above statement. The forum does not change anything from questions, comments and statements received from our readers for circulation in confidentiality.)

 

Answer:

 

Islam spread by sword

In the name of Allah, We praise Him, seek His help and ask for His forgiveness. Whoever Allah guides none can misguide, and whoever He allows to fall astray, none can guide them aright. We bear witness that there is no one (no idol, no person, no grave, no prophet, no imam, no dai, nobody!) worthy of worship but Allah Alone, and we bear witness that Muhammad (saws) is His slave-servant and the seal of His Messengers.

 

Your Statement: However its written in the books that Sahaba during their wars used to given three options to non believers. 1. Accept Islam and you will be other brothers and you continue ruling your lands 2. If you don`t accept Islam then give Jizia and come under our protection 3. If both the conditions are not accetable then be ready for war.

Your statements regarding the three options given to the disbelieving nations by the Sahaabaas is indeed accurate.

 

The second and the third options by themselves did not guarantee that the disbelievers became believers; but what it did permit was that the tyrant leaders, who had become a hindrance and would not allow their subjects to hear the invitation of Islam and make up their own minds, would be humbled and the people would be invited to the Truth of Al-Islam. Whoever amongst them wished to accept Islam as their way of life would become brothers in faith, and whoever amongst the subjects did not wish to revert to Islam would be permitted to follow the deen of their choice, even under muslim rule. There was absolutely no force or coercion used to convert the subjects of these nations of Islam. There was never a bigger lie invented and more often repeated by the disbelievers, even upto this day, than the falsehood: ‘Islam was spread by the sword’!

 

Dear and beloved brother in Islam, the confusion arises in the concept because we look at the nations and the world today through the prism of nations whose boundaries are divided at times by race, by languages, and by culture more than because of belief. But before this division of nations that took place in the mid 1940s under the Charter of the United Nations, the nations were divided (in the time of Prophet (saws) and for a long period thereafter) by belief, and later by colonialism and imperialism (of the British, French, Spanish, etc.).

 

If we could only bring ourselves to relate to the conditions of the nations, the tyrant rulers, and the helpless subjects and their subjugation to their State and their Church at the time of the expansion of Islam, we would understand the situation in a better light.

 

The aristocratic rulers controlled the government and the state, and the priestly class completely controlled the religious institutions. The rulers would partially approve and honor and allow the priests to monopolize the religious affairs of the state, and the priests would approve and honor the rulers in return for their own protection. And in between this understanding of the tyrant rulers and the priests, the subjects were humiliated and subjugated and the law of the jungle prevailed, where the strong oppressed the weak and forced the ruled to serve the purposes of the tyrant rulers!

 

Amidst this era of perpetual tyranny of the state and the church, came the light and freedom of the Truth of Al-Islam; where none was superior to another except in piety, where the law was exactly the same for the rich or poor, strong of weak, ruler or ruled, the holy and the unholy, etc. In the sight of the tyrant rulers and their priests who had monopolized power in their lands, this Truth of Al-Islam was a revolution which would take away their seats of power and make them humble and answerable to the Justice of Allah’s Laws!

 

If the rulers were sensible and righteous, they were apt to adopt the first option and accept Islam as their way of life and allow the propagation of Islam freely in their lands for the people to make up their own minds.

 

If the rulers were sensible and realized that their strength was no comparison to the might of the Muslim army and to the idea that the revolution of Islam would bring to their society, they would accept the easier second option and become ‘dhimmis’ and accept to pay the ‘Jizya’ or protection tax to the Muslims.

 

If the rulers refused to accept the above two options, and insisted on ruling their subjects and their lands in the monopolistic manner that they were accustomed to, then the absolute last option would come into play and war would be imminent!

 

One can only imagine the height of the tyranny the State and the Church in collaboration with each other committed towards their subjects, that the revolution brought about by the common man during the French Revolution in the late 1700s resulted in the cutting of the necks of every Aristocrat and every Clergy in France and the permanent separation of State and Religion in their constitution! This chapter in history inscribed in blood is what we know today as the birth of ‘democracy’!

 

Your Question: My question is what if today any force of non believers come to my country and tell me 1. Accept Christianity and be our brothers and and you continue ruling your lands 2. If you don`t accept Christianity then give Jizia and come under our protection 3. If both the conditions are not accetable then be ready for war.

Beloved brother, you must remember that other than the Truth of Islam, none of the others based their expansion on the mission of spreading their religion or beliefs, but rather their interests were more worldly, like accumulation of material wealth, superiority of race, recognition as a world power, protecting their own worldly interests, etc.; and these were supposedly the mission behind the colonialism and imperialism of the European powers like the British, French, Spanish, Portugese, etc. in the mid-1700s to the mid-1900s and even of the Super Powers of today.

 

If you look at the state of the world affairs today, you will see that the current Super Powers of the world give the rulers of other nations the exact same options, albeit in a slightly different shade:

  1. Accept ‘their’ system of ‘Democracy’ and continue ruling your lands under the guidance and subjugation of the Super Powers.
  2. If the rulers are willing to accept the superiority of the World Powers, do their bidding regardless of whether right or wrong, protect their interests even at the cost of their own, and basically subjugate themselves to their master, then they would be considered ‘allies’ and thus protected!
  3. If you don’t accept their institution and system of democracy in the way and manner they wish, then prepare yourself for war!

 

Regardless of whatever options the nations choose, the main mission of the current Super Powers is option 2, whereby they wish to place ‘dummy’ leaders in other sovereign nations by force, to do their bidding and protect their interests in world affairs!

 

Your Question: None of these 3 conditions are acceptable to me. I want to remain a Muslim, be independent and don`t want to indulde into a war. This attitude of non believers is not acceptable to me

My dear and beloved brother, you must realize that these options are never given to the subjects of a nation, but rather to those rulers who have monopolized power and subjugated their subjects to abject oppression and tyranny!

 

If what is told to us from the news reports is true, and you or I were a subject of Afghanistan under the Taliban or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the removal of tyrant leaders would not be a demand of their subjects, but a wish and a dream! But Alas, regardless of the dreams of ‘freedom’ that are so vividly portrayed by the occupying Super Powers, little do these people realize that they have been taken from the tyranny of one man to the tyranny of another!

 

When the Companions of the Prophet (saws) began their expansion of Islam and freed the subjects from the tyranny of their rulers, they brought with them the Truth and freedom and the invitation of the eternal rewards of the Hereafter to the long-suffering subjects who welcomed this whiff of fresh air with both arms and accepted Islam as their way of life in a manner and multitude never witnessed by mankind before! So much so, that within a short period of only a 100 years after the death of the Prophet (saws), more than half the then known world had willingly of their own free will, accepted Islam as their way of life!

 

A simple and basic look at world history will tell you that of the 1400 odd years since the inception of Islam, the Muslims have been the sole Super Power of the known world for almost 1100 years! As long as the Muslim Ummah remained united and adhered to the guidance of the Quran and the Sunnah they were the leaders of the known world, but when the Muslim rulers became fragmented and left the guidance of the Quran and the Sunnah, dishonor and disgrace became their lot!

 

Sunan of Abu-Dawood Hadith 4284 Narrated by Thawban

The Prophet (saws) said: ‘The (disbelieving) people will soon summon one another to attack you (believers) as people when eating invite others to share their dish!’ Someone asked: ‘Will that be because of our small numbers at that time, O Messenger of Allah (saws)?’ He (saws) replied: ‘No! You will be numerous at that time: but you will be scum and rubbish like that carried down by a torrent, and Allah will take out the fear of you from the breasts of your enemy and put ‘wahn’ (enervation) into your hearts.’ Someone asked: ‘What is ‘wahn’, O Messenger of Allah (saws)?’ He (saws) replied: ‘Love of the world and the dislike of death!’

 

Thus my dear and beloved brother in Islam, our challenge today is exactly the same as was the challenge of the early muslims: to present the true nature of Islam to the world, in word and in deeds…..and those early Muslims have left us a very good and high example to follow! Allah is our witness, the condition of the Muslim Ummah will not change from its state today, until the revolution of the Truth of Islam is presented in its true form again to the world! Allah is our witness brother, without the same patience as portrayed by the early generation of muslims, without the same love for the deen of Allah, without the same sense of sacrifice, and without the same zeal to propagate the True picture of Islam to the world, the Muslim Ummah will remain the ‘scum’ and the ‘rubbish’ as prophesized by the Noble Messenger of Allah (saws)!

 

Allah Says in the Holy Quran Chapter 13 Surah Raad verse 11:

11 Verily never will Allah change the condition of a people until they change it themselves! But when Allah Wills a people's punishment there can be no turning it back, nor will they find besides Him any to protect.

 

Sunan of Abu-Dawood Hadith 3455 Narrated by Abdullah ibn Umar

I heard the Messenger of Allah (saws) say: ‘Allah will make disgrace prevail over you, and will not withdraw it until you return to your original religion!’

 

The Noble Messenger of Allah (saws) who warned the believers of these trying times to come, also gave the good news that the Muslim Ummah will triumph once again from its abyss of disgrace, and will once again unite itself and establish the Truth of Islam in the world. When exactly this will happen is in the Knowledge of Allah Subhanah Alone. It might take a few years, a few hundred years, or even a few thousand years…but Allah is our witness, it will happen as related in Truth by the one who was sent with the Truth!

 

My dear and beloved brother in Islam, your and our role, and in fact our test and trial, is only which side were we on, and what efforts and sacrifices did we make towards the realization of this goal!

 

If one trusts, obeys, and follows the guidance and commands of Allah and His Messenger (saws), one can be assured of never ever being misled; but if one believes, obeys and follows any other guidance, other than that of Allah and His Messenger (saws), one can be assured of being led astray.

 

Whatever written of Truth and benefit is only due to Allah’s Assistance and Guidance, and whatever of error is of me alone. Allah Alone Knows Best and He is the Only Source of Strength.

 

Your brother and well wisher in Islam,

 

Burhan

 


Related Answers:

Recommended answers for you: