CHARGE OF "THE SWORD"

CHARGE OF "THE SWORD"  

The greatest crime, the greatest "sin" of Muhammad (pbuh} in the eyes of the Christian West is that he did not allow himself to be slaughtered, to be "crucified" by his enemies. He ably defended himself, his family and his followers; and finally vanquished his enemies. Muhammad's (pbuh} success is the Christians' gall of disappointment: he did not believe in any vicarious sacrifice for the sins of others. He believed and behaved naturally.

IN THE STATE OF NATURE, EVERY ONE HAS A RIGHT TO DEFEND HIS PERSON AND POSSESSIONS, AND EXTEND HIS HOSTILITIES TO A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF SATISFACTION AND RETALIATION," says Gibbon, the master historian in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." His struggle and victory over the forces of unbelief and evil made the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica to exclaim, Muhammad (pbuh} to be - - - "THE MOST SUCCESSFUL OF ALL RELIGIOUS PERSONALITIES." How can the enemies of Islam account for Muhammad's phenomenal achievements except to decry that he spread his religion at the point of the sword? He forced Islam down peoples' throats!? 
 

"HISTORY MAKES IT CLEAR HOWEVER, THAT THE LEGEND OF FANATICAL MUSLIMS SWEEPING THROUGH THE WORLD AND FORCING ISLAM AT THE POINT OF THE SWORD UPON CONQUERED RACES IS ONE OF THE MOST FANTASTICALLY ABSURD MYTHS THAT HISTORIANS HAVE EVER REPEATED." De Lacy O'Leary in "Islam at the Crossroads'' London, 1923, p.8 

You do not have to be a historian like O'Leary to know that the Muslims ruled Spain for 736 years. The longest the Christians ever ruled over Muslims was 500 years in Mozambique, a territory captured from an Arab governor by the name of Musa-bin-baique, a name they could not properly pronounce, hence the name Mozambique. Even today, after five centuries of Christian overlordship the country is still 60 percent Muslim. However, after eight centuries in Spain the Muslims were totally eliminated from that country so that not even one man was left to give the Azan {the Muslim call to prayer}. If the Muslims had used force, military or economic there would not have been any Christian left in Spain to have kicked the Muslims out. One can blame the Muslims for exploitation if you like but one cannot charge them with using the sword to convert Spaniards to the Islamic religion.

Today, Islam is still spreading all over the world and Muslims have NO sword!! The Muslims were also the masters of India for a thousand years, but eventually when the subcontinent received independence in 1947, the Hindus obtained three quarters of the country and the Muslims the balance of the one-quarter. Why? Because the Muslims did not force Islam down the Hindus' throats! In Spain and in India, the Muslims were no paragons of virtue, yet they obeyed the Qur'anic injunction to the letter

LET THERE BE NO COMPULSION IN RELIGION: FOR TRUTH STANDS OUT DISTINCT FROM ERROR. Holy Quran 2:256

The Muslim conquerors understood from this command that "compulsion" was incompatible with true religion: because

(a} Religion depends on faith and will, and these would be meaningless if induced by force. Force can conquer but cannot convert.

(b) Truth and Error have been so clearly shown up by the Mercy of God that there should be no doubt in the minds of any person of goodwill as to the fundamentals of faith.

(c) God's protection is continuous and His Plan is always to lead us from the depths of darkness into the clearest light.
[(a), (b} and (c) are Yusuf Ali's comments on verse 256. Obtain his translation with over 6000 explanatory footnotes from the IPCI.] Except for some eccentrics here and there, the Muslims as a whole adhered to the commandment of God in the lands over which they held sway. But what can the enemy say about countries where no single Muslim soldier had set foot?

(i) INDONESIA: It is a fact that over a hundred million Indonesians are Muslim, yet no conquering Muslim army ever landed on any of its over two thousand islands.

(ii} MALAYSIA: The overwhelming number of its people in this country are Muslims yet no Muslim soldier had landed there either.

(iii} AFRICA: The majority of the people on the East coast of Africa as far down as Mozambique, as well as the bulk of the inhabitants on the West coast of the continent are Muslims, but history does not record any invading hoards of Muslims from anywhere. 

Source

To Be Continued....

The Myth of Crucifixion - Lessons From History

The Myth of Crucifixion

Last, but not the least, is the matter of the alleged crucifixion  of  Prophet  Isa  (AS),  regarding  which  there  is  a crucial disagreement between the Islamic belief and the account of the four Canonical Gospels. According to the latter, the supreme Jewish authority in Roman Palestine — the Sanhedrin — convicted Jesus of blasphemy and insisted for death sentence, which was carried out by the Roman governor Pilate Pontius by way of crucifixion. Afterwards, on the third day, the dead body of Jesus Christ was miraculously resurrected and revived; the Christ then met with his disciples, and, after giving them some instructions, ascended into the heaven.

On the other hand, the Holy Qur’an strongly rejects the idea of Prophet Isa (AS) having been crucified, and — according to the authentic Prophetic traditions or Hadith — he was saved from such an accursed and humiliating death by direct Divine intervention and raised up alive into the heavens. It has also been unequivocally explained to us by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) that Prophet Isa (AS) will reappear on earth to live out the rest of his life, and then he will die like any other mortal.

The only void left in this Islamic tradition, however, concerns the “when” and “where” of the ascension of Prophet Isa  (AS),  and  the  question  regarding  “who”  actually  got crucified in his place. This vacuum can be satisfactorily filled with the help of the narration in the “Gospel of Barnabas” according to which, when the traitor Judas Iscariot came ahead of the Roman soldiers and entered the garden where Prophet Jesus Christ was hiding, God the Almighty caused his face and voice to be changed so that he looked and talked exactly like Jesus, while in the meantime the prophet himself was raised up into  the heavens. 

Thus it was the traitor who was crucified, while Prophet Jesus Christ was miraculously saved by direct Divine intervention. It may be pointed out here that, unlike Barnabas who was a close disciple and companion of Prophet Jesus, none of the writers of the four so-called authentic gospels — i.e., Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John — ever met with the prophet himself. These gospels were written between 70 C.E and 115 C.E. but their earliest available manuscripts date back to the fourth century C.E, making their authenticity rather dubious. 

A number of different gospels were in circulation throughout the early  period  of  Christianity,  the  manuscripts  of  which  were freely altered and amended by the copyists in order to suit the doctrines of their particular sect. The four gospels that are included in the New Testament were accepted as genuine by the Church — and the rest were rejected as apocryphal, and their possession prohibited — not on the basis of merit, but only because these four books were in conformity with the official Church dogma. 

The Gospel of Barnabas was among the books that were banned in 325 C.E by the Nicean Council; it was forbidden by the Decree of the Western Churches in 382 C.E; it was again banned by Pope Innocent in 465 C.E, and then by the Glasian Decree in 496 C.E. 

To this day, Christian authorities refuse to accept the Gospel of Barnabas as authentic, despite striking similarities between this Gospel and the documents discovered in 1947 in the caves of Qumran, popularly called the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is because the Gospel of Barnabas proclaims  absolute  Divine  Unity,  criticizes  the  pagan innovations of St. Paul, declares the truth about the myth of Crucifixion, and, above all, contains unambiguous prophecies regarding  the  advent  of  Prophet  Mohammad  (SAW),  all  of which is enough to destroy the very foundations of the Christian faith  as  it  exists  today.   

However,  any  unbiased  comparative study  of  the  New  Testament,  the  Dead  Sea  Scrolls,  and  the Gospel of Barnabas is bound to reveal that this gospel is the correct and genuine account of the life and teachings of Prophet Isa (AS), not withstanding the flimsy objections being raised by the Christians.

Source:Lesson from History (Book) by Dr. Israr Ahmad