Gosh I wonder why the likes of Monte never ***** about all the stolen Muslim lands conquered by force where the indigenous populations were forced to convert, leave or be killed?
Hmmm! Still no comment from Monte & his terrorist supporting ilk. Golly gee, I wonder why? Heh Heh!
I respond to facts, it is patently untrue that non-Jews were "forced" to convert.
"The idea that Islam was spread by the sword has had wide currency at many differeet
times and
the impression is still widespread among the less reflective sections of the media and
the wider public that people converted to Islam because they were forced to do so. This is, of
course, a very useful argument in all sorts of ways. It allows non-Muslims to explain the
otherwise problematic fact that so many people converted to Islam when it was, clearly, an
inferior or even completely wicked religion. Claiming that people were forced to convert meant
avoiding the difficult idea that people might have converted because of inadequacies or failings
among the Christian clergy or worse, the intolerable thought that Islam was the true religion and
that God was on the side of the Muslims. So much easier, then, to say that people were converted
because they had no choice or rather that the choice was between conversion and death.....
The nature of the early Muslim conquests in the Middle East made forcible conversion
almost impossible. The Muslim armies were comparatively small, between ten and twenty
thousand are possible estimates for the numbers in the armies which conquered Syria and Iraq,
probably fewer in Egypt and Iran. To be sure, more Arab Muslims emigrated from Arabia to
settle in the newly conquered areas but even so the Arab Muslims were a small minority, perhaps
10% of the population of Egypt and perhaps 20% of the most densely settled area, Iraq. In these
circumstances, forcing unwilling people to convert was out of the question.....
There were clear fiscal incentives not to encourage the spread of Islam. As we have seen,
Quran itself had laid down that the unbelievers should pay taxes, called jizya, which was
originally a generic name for tribute of all sorts. By the period in the late eighth century when the
Muslim fiscal system reached its maturity, it had been established that the dhimmis should pay a
poll-tax. All landowners were now obliged to pay the kharaj or land tax but the dhimmis suffered
under extra fiscal burdens. The produce of the jizya was very useful because it was paid in cash.
This became specially valuable in the years when structure of caliphal finance collapsed. Land
tax became much more difficult to collect and was often assigned away to bureaucrats or soldiers.
Petty rulers and warlords could still collect the jizya in cash money.
There were, in short, clear
reasons why Muslim governments would not want to encourage conversion to Islam. They were
in most cases effectively unable to prevent conversion but they were certainly not going to use
force to achieve it.
http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/rps/kennedy.pdf[URL='http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/rps/kennedy.pdf[/QUOTE'][URL='http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/rps/kennedy.pdf[/QUOTE'][/QUOTE[/URL][/URL]]
What a crock of shit, the Koran commands the muslims to put people to the sword and force conversion on them. Even if what tis load of balls says is right the muslims have still invaded another groups land and stolen it by force. Since WW2 we have seen this happen many times in the horn of Africa when ISLAMONAZI MURDERING TERRORISTS have attacked the indigenous peoples and forced them into conversion or death. Then we have the 10 million mass murdered in India because the muslims wanted the land for themselves.
