Preaching of Islam

This book was written by Sir Thomas Arnold who lived and worked as a professor of philosophy in Lahore, India (now Pakistan). He was widely traveled in the Muslim world. This book, now roughly 100 years old, is still relevant today, perhaps more so now than ever. He states his case that Islam was not spread by the sword, as is so stereo typically thought by many, but through preaching and daily commerce. While there has been military conquest by Islamic nations, the actual conversions to the Islamic faith were not done by the sword. This is a tough concept to grasp. Considering that Islam is considered an entire way of life, the military conquests are not outside of the realm of Islam. The division between religion and politics leads to the schizophrenia we see today in many a Western nation’s bumbling other countries, most recently America in Iraq. For the sake of analogy let us ask that if the citizens of Iraq were, for example, to convert to Christianity could we say that they were converted by the sword? Or did the conversions come once the military maneuvering was done? If a host of missionaries ride in on the coattails of the military, would history lead us to believe that conversions were done by the sword? Arnold makes his case that it was not the sword that led to the majority of conversions to Islam. It was the strength of the faith of the ordinary individuals who lived it. The book is not light reading and is very dense but it is interesting and it is definitely worth reading to get some balance on how the spread of Islam is viewed. He is not naively glowing in his approach but is very balanced in his report. Vital for those who really want to understand truth on their own terms.