Peace: The Summum Bonum

titled, The Indian Musalmans by William Wilson Hunter. I read this book myself and found out that it actually talked about the peaceful penetration of Islam in India. I wrote back to him with the clipping and thereafter he did not revert. History does not prove that sword was used for the religious expansion of Islam. Political expansion was a different case, specific to individuals and dynasties. Owing to this mistaken notion, political expansion is seen as an act of forced religious expansion. In reality, Islam spread on the basis of the ideology of tawhid (the oneness of God) and it were the Sufis who played a major role in the spread of Islam. The Sufis, as is well known, did not make any use of force; they were simply spiritual guides. Often quoted in arguments are the wars and fights with the Byzantine and Persian Empire during the reign of the rightly guided caliphs. I have addressed this in great detail in my book, The Prophet of Peace (Penguin publication). Once the tribal communities started accepting Islam and pledging their allegiance to the caliphs, the then superpowers (Byzantine and Persia) felt a sense of threat and declared war on the Muslim community. In their defence, Muslims had to fight back. In those days, the territory of the vanquished was merged with the territory of the victors. But the inhabitants of the newly merged territories were never forcefully converted to Islam. An example of this can be seen when Umar ibn al-Khattab (the second Muslim caliph) entered the city of Jerusalem. The Patriarch of the city, Sophronius, offered Umar to say his prayers in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but Umar declined the offer. Upon being enquired, Umar said that he had declined so that later on Muslims do not claim their right on the land saying that their caliph had prayed there, and thus take away from the Christians what was rightfully theirs. In