Peace: The Summum Bonum

Peace: The Summum Bonum Was Islam spread by the sword? Human history has witnessed several events of expansion – political, industrial, social and religious. However, political expansion has most often been misconstrued as religious expansion. In the case of Islam, there is no proof that sword or force was used to spread the religion. There were dynasties which in order to fulfil their political ambitions conquered many lands. For instance, the Battle of Chausa was fought between the Mughal emperor Humayun and the Afghan Sher Shah Suri (1539). Both the kings were of the same faith. If the purpose of conquering lands and expanding empires was to spread Islam then there should have been no reason for these two Muslim rulers to engage in military combat. This example shows that conquests by Muslim rulers and emperors in history have been for serving political ends and to expand their dynasties. These were not religiously motivated wars and battles. Swami Vivekananda, in the book Letters of Swami Vivekananda, wrote; It is nonsense to say that Hindus were converted to Islam by force. Similarly, Egypt was a large country to enter within the fold of Islam. Sir Arthur Keith, while studying the phenomenon remarked: Egyptians were conquered not by sword but by the Quran. (‘A New Theory of Human Evolution’, p. 303. ed. 1948) Let me quote an example of how deep this misconception of forceful spread of Islam has been. I happened to correspond with a person from a different faith who hailed from Hyderabad. He was quite adamant in his belief that Islam spread through violence in India and he shared the reference of a book in this regard. It was