A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Chapter 12/118

[Sidenote: 118. Mr. Bosworth Smith quoted.]

Mr. Bosworth Smith says:&mdash;

"The free toleration of the purer among the creeds around him, which the Prophet had at first enjoined, gradually changes into intolerance. Persecuted no longer, Mohammed becomes a persecutor himself; with the Koran in one hand, the scymitar in the other, he goes forth to offer to the nations the threefold alternative of conversion, tribute, death."

Mohammad never changed his practice of toleration nor his own teachings into intolerance; he was always persecuted at Mecca and Medina, but, for all we know, he himself never turned a persecutor. The three-fold alternative so much talked of, and so little proved, is nowhere to be found in the Koran. This subject has been fully discussed in paras. 34-39.