How can Islam be called the religion of peace when it was spread by the sword?

Answer 1

Muslims ruled Spain for 800 years

Muslims ruled Spain for about 800 years. The Muslims in Spain never used the sword to force the people to convert. Later the Christian Crusaders came to Spain and wiped out the Muslims. There was not a single Muslim in Spain who could openly give the ‘adhaan’, that is the Muslims’ call for prayers.



Fourteen million Arabs are Coptic Christians

Muslims were the lords of Arabia for 1400 years. For a few years the British ruled, and for a few years the French ruled, but overall, the Muslims ruled Arabia for 1400 years. Yet today, there are 14 million Arabs who are Coptic Christians i.e. Christians since generations. If the Muslims had used the sword, there would not have been a single Arab who would have remained a Christian.


More than 80% non-Muslims in India

The Muslims ruled India for about a thousand years. These Muslim rulers did not use any force in order to convert people to Islam. Today more than 80% of the population of India consists of non-Muslims. All these non-Muslim Indians are testimony today that Islam was not spread by the sword, nor was any force used for conversion to Islam.



Increase in the world religions from 1934 to 1984

An article in Reader’s Digest ‘Almanac’, year book 1986, gave the statistics of the increase of percentage of the major religions of the world in half a century from 1934 to 1984. This article also appeared in ‘The Plain Truth’ magazine. At the top was Islam, which increased by 235 percent, while Christianity had increased only by a mere 47 percent. May one ask, which war took place in this century which converted millions of people to Islam?



Islam is the fastest growing religion

Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and Europe. Today the fastest growing religion in America is Islam. The fastest growing religion in Europe is Islam. Which sword is forcing people in the West to accept Islam in such large numbers?




Dr. Joseph Adam Pearson

Dr. Joseph Adam Pearson rightly says, “People who worry that nuclear weaponry will one day fall in the hands of the Arabs, fail to realize that the Islamic bomb has been dropped already, it fell the day MUHAMMAD was born”.

Answer 2

I would like to say that your question is good and serious question...

is Islam the religion of peace..??
is Christianity a religion of peace..??

The religion is a group of ideas and a way of life...most of them targeted to make life easier and better..and to make the people believe in one God..

in life there is politic, governments, and leaders who will kill their brothers to conquered the rule...

Islam as you said is religion...it's not a state, it's not a country, or a state just like Christianity...

When the Muslims defeated the Persian empire and roman empire...it was an act of defense sine both nation were occupied Arabic areas..and the Muslims for real didn't expect that they will win..but since every area was full with Arabic tribes who welcomed the Muslims since they are Arab they helped to fight against Persian and Romans...

now after the prophet died...
The Muslims had a state ...and the state had borders...
The new Leaders wanted to expand their territory...for spreading the religion, getting more market, conquered the silk road ( which was like oil market now).

If you read the history, you will find that Muslims never demolished the cities or burned the civilians, they always fight who resist them, and when they win they apply a tax on non Muslims to protect them.

and you can make a compare between European crusade war who invade the middle east and burn every thing in their face, they even killed their brothers the eastern Christians ( Arab Christians )...
can we say it's because Christianity.

so as an answer for your questins.
Yes we can call the religion of Islam is the religion of peace, and yes the Muslim leaders used the sword to open more nation like the Persian empire and like Roman too, for pure politic goals, and as a result of wining.... the Islam spread since the people who win start to teach Islam.

but they never put the sword on the neck of Christians and told them to be Muslims..just like what Spanish Christian people did to the Spanish Muslims who stayed after the Arab lost Andalusia=Spain

as you know when u accept something by force, you should leave it as soon as the force loss, so why then there are many Christians in Muslims areas, even Jewish and buddies, how can you justify that.

now you can see Islam is spreading in Europe and USA, not by sword, infact Muslim countries are very weak to make wars, but because Islam is a religion it's not a state.

and there is wide difference when a religion make a war and when a politic leader use the religion to justify his war.

Answer 3

Islam is not spread by the sword, only a few fanatics do that. Should you have actually read the Koran you would see that it is a much more peace oriented religion than any christian religion - and this from a christian.

Answer 4

The word "Islam" means "Peace" but it refers to the peace that comes from total submission. Since the world is split into the House of Peace (those that submit to Allah) and the House of War (the infidels), it is the burden of the House of Peace to subdue and crush the House of War so that Peace may come to the world. If that means that every infidel has to die, then that is the will of God.

Answer 5

that is a part from an article "Muhammad's sword" by Uri Avner, the head of the Israeli peace movement; a Jew who seems to know more about history than many of us .. the article was a
reply on the word of present catholic pope.
it also replies your question :

The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts.
Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, Verse 256(strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant Verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith."

How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the Prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes - Christian, Jewish and others - in Arabia , when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.

Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: how did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece . Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule andclung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favourites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus.

At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith - and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.

There no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age.
How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics reconquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousands of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape?
Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

Why? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll tax, but were exempted from military service - a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion - because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.

The story about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims - the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna .

Answer 6

Islam was not spread by the sword. However, Christianity was. The Aztec, Inca's and Mayans were forced by the conquistadors to accept Christianity. Why don't you ask this question about them?

Answer 7

The same way American administrations have maintained that they are spreading Democracy by overthrowing foreign nations that have made Democratic decisions we don't agree with. For example: Iran had a popular revolution, America reinstated the Shah, Iran had a much more radicalized revolution which put the Ayatollah in place.

Answer 8

Because whenever Islam used sword, it was to eliminate tyranny bring peace.Historical evidences shows that during Islamic expansion there were more truces and treaties than war.Also after gaining hold over an army muslims never showed brutality.

Answer 9

I don't know about the history of Islam and about how it was spread, but I can see what is happening these days. It's a violent and evil cult whose followers want to kill or maim non-Muslims. Some Muslims even kill other Muslims. It's happening in Iraq and Palestine.

Answer 10

Its more like the religion of pieces that comes from the sword.