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Scheming Jews, no less.

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What about Mecca, does that count? After all, we were talking about Mecca, the city that non-Muslims are now forbidden from.

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They are non-Muslims too.

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I also cited his 'prediction' that the entire area would be cleansed of all non-muslims. All of these examples I have presented, and you have ignored, except to use them as evidence of me of changing my mind.

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Doesn't sound like spreading Islam by the sword at all, does it?

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So why is Islamic law so hostile to pagans?

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What about Muslim men capturing lots of female slaves and wives? Or is that what you mean by osmosis?

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Or remain as second class citzens. Islam spread behind the borders of the rapidly expanding Caliphate, by 'osmosis' as Gandalf likes to put it. The Caliphate did not spread by people adopting the religion then joining the political state. Generally, when people talk about spreading religion by the sword, they mean exactly what the Caliphate did. Nothing lives up to the

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You say this to equate it to other religions, yet what was the "Christian" empire? Most historical Christian empires fought other Christian empires and nations, well after the religion had already spread there. It was not until the discovery of the new world that Christianity spread on the back of a political expansion. When Jesus died, he had a handful of followers. When Muhammed died, he was running a rapidly expanding empire. The spread of Islam by the sword is the example set by Muhammed and written in to the Koran and Hadith, and the example followed by later Muslims.

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Except where it explicitly encourages it. Even Gandalf cites examples of people faced with a choice of converting to Islam or dying. He also cites the example of the Islamic state discriminating against non-Muslims economically, backed up by the sword. Islam is equally at ease offering non-Muslims a slow death or a fast one.

freediver wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2015 at 10:38pm:


Yes we know FD - you have no examples. Thanks for confirming.

freediver wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2015 at 10:38pm:


Christianity spread by banning and persecuting pagans by successive Roman emperors and forcing them to convert - at that time still the vast majority of the population. Thats what I would call 'spreading religion by the sword'. In stark contrast the muslim conquerors permitted their subjects to retain their religion and had rights of worship - but according to you thats somehow a most heinous instance of spreading religion by the sword.

We're talking about dhimis FD - you were making the case that the system of dhimitude was somehow 'spreading Islam by the sword' - remember?

freediver wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2015 at 10:38pm:


By the way, nothing lives up to the... what?

Were you about to say that nothing lives up to the horrendous barbarity of the way Islam spread - but then you remembered the way christianity was spread, by mass persecution of the pagans in the Roman Empire - and you realised it was a pretty tall order, even for you, to compare that favourably to the muslims allowing freedom of religion in their empire?

Only FD could argue that an official state policy of protecting freedom of religion, including houses of worship - amounts to spreading religion by the sword.

freediver wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2015 at 7:05pm:


Thanks, FD, we were all waiting for that one. An oldie but a goodie.

Another request if I may - that scheming Jew Moh tortured for his gold.

Tell us that one, and you’ll have covered every point you’ve made in 8 years.

And in only 6 pages too. Not even the Wiki’s that concise.

If you tell us about the scheming Jew, you can spend the next 20 pages asking Lafayette and G questions. Who knows?

They may even confess.

freediver wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2015 at 9:36pm:


Are you trying to make it to the 7th page?

freediver wrote on Dec 23^rd, 2015 at 7:05pm:


They had been subjects of a foreign ruler before Islam came - thats the point I made before. When the muslims came, they simply passed from one ruler to another - but there is no question that under their muslim rulers they were treated far better, and had far more religious freedoms. Syriac christians, for example, were persecuted by the East Romans for their rejection of the Council of Chalcedon, and the East Romans were particularly brutal against the jews - banning them from Jerusalem. When the muslims overthrew the Romans, the rights for all christians were restored, and the very first order by the Caliph after capturing Jerusalem (bloodlessly), was to allow jews back in and opened their temple. I'm not aware of any widespread enslavement of the conquered people - but I do know that there are repeated references to terms of surrender that specifically ruled out enslavement. And of course, there were no pagans, so the issue of what to do with them never came up.

And if you look at the actual terms of the surrender of all the major cities - Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria etc - they are remarkably generous- no enslavement, religious rights retained and always safe passage for people who didn't want to live under muslim rule. The final proof in the pudding is seen in the beginning of the Islamic Golden Age. You'll remember that you and Soren and others are always keen to point out that the bulk of the scholarship that propelled this intellectual age was done by non-muslims. While not true (the intellectual age was inspired and led by arabs - as Soren once proved in a source he tried to use to prove the opposite), it is absolutely true that the christian and jewish scholarly tradition experienced an unprecedented boom under the caliphate, and they were an instrumental part of the intellectual flowering under Islamic rule. Indeed - how these poor oppressed dhimis suffered.

Lafayette wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2015 at 2:42pm:


No, that's not entirely consistent. At times religion was not forced and at other times it was...

Islam honestly is not so very different to any other faith at the end of the day. All the best "lessons" under the sun are only as good as the individual people acting on them, living by them, interpreting them and/or thinking it their business to spread them to others. That's a big part of my personal overall problem with organised religion.

All faiths and ideologies have, at some level at the very least, been spread by the sword or eradicated by it.

It is a major sign of the human races immaturity as a species that we can debate one brand of bloody minded violence as being better, more worthy or just than another brand of the same bloody minded violence.

Now that can hardly be all the fault of Islam.