A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Chapter 12/115

[Sidenote: 115. Islam not aggressive.]

That Islam as preached by Mohammad was never aggressive has been fully shown in several places of the Koran. During the whole time of his ministry, Mohammad was persecuted, rejected, despised and at last made an outlaw by the Koreish at Mecca, and a fugitive seeking protection in a distant city; exiled, attacked upon, besieged, defeated, and prevented from returning to Mecca or visiting the Holy Kaaba by the same enemies at Mecca and other surrounding tribes who had joined them, and even from within Medina plotted against by the Jews who were not less aggressive towards him than their confederates of Mecca, the Koreish, whom they had instigated to make war on him and had brought an overwhelming army, had proved traitors, and, even more injurious than the Koreish themselves. Consequently, he was constantly in dangers and troubles, and under such circumstances it was impossible for him to be aggressive, to get time or opportunity to pursue any aggressive course, or enforce, at the point of the sword, any attempt of his for universal acceptance, or universal supremacy even if he had designed so. But it was far from his principles to have cherished the object of universal conquest. "That Islam ever stepped beyond the limits of Arabia and its border lands," admits Sir. W. Muir in his Rede Lecture for 1881, just twenty years after he had written the passage I am dealing with, "was due to circumstances rather than design. The faith was meant originally for the Arabs. From first to last, the call was addressed primarily to them." He writes in a footnote of the same lecture (page 5):


 * "It is true that three or four years before, Mahomet had addressed dispatches to the Kaiser, and the Chosroes, and other neighbouring potentates, summoning them to embrace the true faith. But the step had never been followed up in any way."