A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Introduction/2

[Sidenote: Early wrongs of the Moslems.]

[Sidenote: Justification in taking up arms, if taken.]

2. All the wars of Mohammad were defensive. He and those who took interest in his cause were severely oppressed at intervals, and were in a sort of general persecution at Mecca at the hands of the ungodly and fierce Koreish. Those who were weak and without protection had to leave their city, and twice fly to the Christian land of Abyssinia, pursued by the wrathful Koreish, but in vain. Those who remained at Mecca were subject to all sorts of indignities, malignity and a deprivation of all religious and social liberty, because they had forsaken the inferior deities of the Koreish, and believed in the only ONE GOD of Mohammad, in whose mission they had full belief. Mohammad and his followers had every sanction, under the natural and international law, then and there to wage war against their persecutors with the object of removing the (fitnah) persecution and obtaining their civil rights of freedom and religious liberty in their native city.