How do people who believe Islam is the religion of peace reconcile that belief with the historic Islam that was...

This is a historical topic. It has nothing to do with papercraft.

Islam is a very order focused political ideology. I am just confused as to how one can view it as the religion of peace. No one ever seems to explain that point. It's just arguments like .

I could easily argue it.

>colonisation was objectively a good thing
The Arabs overtook declining, overly taxed areas of the Byzantine Empire, the people were unhappy with their rulers and economically deprived, there was little freedom. The Arabs gave them considerably more religious freedom, they were allowed to keep their religions for a tax, they were overall taxed much less than the Byzantine, and eventually the Golden age of Islam, however you want to imagine it, was very good for the conquered regions, bringing an era of wealth and prosperity.

>was not really Islamic in nature.
The "Islamic" Conquests were simply conquests of an empire, as all empires do, religion was not the main driving force behind but the desire for land and power was by greedy rulers, it is mans nature to conquer, the religion was merely used as a useful tool to encourage the troops.

See, any argument can be made, there is no such thing as this black and white world of history that you imagine.

I'm not a "Mohammadan" (What is this, the 15th century?), I'm a historian.

It's a religion of peace, in that it claims that when all of the world is under Islam, there will be peace.

>Build universities, libraries, hospitals, museums, wildlife preserves, infrastructure, complex systems of state
>The population of sub-Saharan Africa experiences a massive population boom as a result

I'm against colonization, but only an uneducated person could argue that European colonialists brought down the level of civilization in Africa.

/pol/ you cunts

>religion was not the main driving force behind
This goes against the Quran. Muhammad conquered because it was his divine right to conquer.

Just like the Jews

>universities, libraries, hospitals
ditto for the Arab conquerors

Well why did you type /po/, then?

Only if they did not conflict with the Quran.

*after the 12th century

I would like to start by looking at your question.
>historic Islam that was extremely violent and political
Extremely violent meant that it was violent to an extreme but the first Islamic conquests moved into a vacuum strongly contested by the Byzantines and the Sassanians. It was not any more or less violent.

This does not change the main part of your question. Why consider it a religion of peace if it presented itself with violence of any kind (be it warfare or establishing new dominating bureaucracies)?

This is perhaps not the platform to discuss this but you are talking about reconciliation with the past or certain actions taken in the name of Islam.

Try reading 'A'isha al-Ba'uniyya's "Clear Inspiration, on Praise of the Trusted One" and "The Emanation of Grace and the Gathering of the Union"

She writes in the 1300s just as another war is about to take unfold and she draws upon history in the form of poems and written accounts by her predecessors including the prophet Muhammed to try and reconcile past violences with her ideas of peace. This will probably answer your question better than anything on this board.

>muh Islamic Golden Age
This is on par with "The Dark Ages" as being a historical myth. You're correct about the greater wealth and prosperity in former Byzantine lands under the Arabs, and to a certain degree the greater religious freedom (though non-Muslims were always second-class citizens). But all the great scientists and philosophers, save one or two, were former Christians and Jews who were forced to convert to Islam, not the Sunni conquerors and their descendants. In any event, after the so-called Golden Age ended, Islam entered an apparently permanent state of intellectual darkness, and that region of the world ceased producing great men of science and philosophy.

>I'm not a "Mohammadan" (What is this, the 15th century?), I'm a historian.

Have you ever read a book on Islam written before the 1960s? The term "Mohammedan" is standard. See quotes by Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt for examples. I'm not even a "historian" and I know this.

Aha, I knew using that term would call one of you out.

Who cares if they were former Christians and Jews, or forced to convert? I don't care. It happened because the empire of Islam facilitated it to happen due to the stability and unity of many different peoples. You go from saying it's a myth, to saying they were originally Christians and Jews. Well, which is it?

Oh and the Dark ages existed and happened, claiming the migration period was some lovely delightful period of fun happiness and prosperity is ridiculous. It's just some stupid reactionary new idea in response to the uneducated applying the dark ages to the entire medieval period, when in reality it only refers to the few centuries after Western Rome fell. You aren't smart or unique for claiming the Dark Ages never happened, you just look like an idiot.

To add to this, it's called the "Islamic Golden Age" because its the best term to use. The "Converted Jews, Greeks, Christians, Persians and Some Arabs Golden Age" is a bit lengthy, you could use "Middle Eastern Medieval Golden Age" but that's very long as well. Islamic is used because it happened while under a Islamic Empires.

Bait

You sure got me, friend. I figured you'd already have your mind set on the topic, being a "historian", but there are others here who might actually believe in the Golden Age myth, and that must be countered whenever it's brought up. Ditto for the Dark Ages myth, and while you have a point about the migrations, average public-school indoctrinated idiots think of the Dark Ages as the entire period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance.

Anyway, the fact is that there were great men who prospered under the Arab-conquered lands in the first century or two after the conquest. These were mostly natives, not Arab Muslims, and more importantly, I don't know much reason to think they wouldn't have flourished had their regions not come under control by desert bedouins (If you tell show me why, I'll listen). That region of the world produced great geniuses going back to early antiquity. It was Islam that ENDED the greatness of the Levant, North Africa, and the Middle East forever, even if there was one last flowering of beauty before the sun set on that region forever.

>But all the great scientists and philosophers, save one or two, were former Christians and Jews who were forced to convert to Islam, not the Sunni conquerors
WE WUZ JEWS AND SHEEIT

Do you have any scientific proof of the ethnic/religious heritage of muslim scientists 1000 years ago to back up this claim, or are you just pulling it out of your ass?

>implying the cons of colonisation outweighed the pros
Africa was great under European colonisation, Leopold's escapades excluded. It was the rapid and ill thought out decolonisation that fucked it.

>Arab butthurt

There's no "scientific" proof of anyone's heritage unless you have DNA samples. There is plenty of historical proof backing my claim. Any honest historian knows this.

Again you call it a myth while simultaneously acknowledging its existence (While seeking to take the Islamic part out of it because of personal bias against Islam, not because of historical reasoning)

>average public-school indoctrinated idiots think of the Dark Ages as the entire period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance.
And your response to those idiots is to claim that the Dark ages never happened. This is silly and reactionary, they did happen, the early medieval period wasn't a great time to be alive, there was much unrest, poverty, war, and lack of progress.

>These were mostly natives, not Arab Muslims, and more importantly,
So, no one is calling it the Arab Golden age, it's the "Islamic" Golden age, your continual repetition about ethnicity means absolutely nothing. Islam is a religion, not a race.

>,I don't know much reason to think they wouldn't have flourished had their regions not come under control by desert bedouins
Well they didn't under the Byzantines or the Persians.

>That region of the world produced great geniuses going back to early antiquity. It was Islam that ENDED the greatness of the Levant, North Africa, and the Middle East forever, even if there was one last flowering of beauty before the sun set on that region forever.
Aha, okay then. No, this is wrong. That region hadn't been relevant to world progress if we can call it that, for at least 1000 years, possibly longer. The Assyrians would have been the last great flourishing of antiquity in the region, the Seleucid's did little but slowly decline, the region was good under the Romans but it wasn't exactly special, it wasn't a golden age. Under the Byzantines it was what, a border region warzone heavily taxed and oppressed constantly changing hands between empires? No my friend, Islam did not end the greatness of Mesopotamia, that had ended long ago, Islam totally revived it, and then it was ended by a combination of invasions and decline of "Ijtihad" (Free through)

thought*

Because it's peaceful only towards other Muslims. no one else.

>all the great scientists and philosophers, save one or two, were former Christians and Jews who were forced to convert to Islam
can you give some examples of this?
i've heard that there's a possibility that al-khwarezmi could have been zoroastrian in his early life based on his region of origin and family but i've never heard of any others being converts much less forced converts

>Attaching racial component to historiography you admit lacks evidence for actual race
Mainstream history, or mainstream alt right history where white people/christians go off on the WE WUZ KANGS tangent because they are so insecure and they need to claim other people's history too? You distorted the historiography of the Islamic golden age to claim it was actually christian...when your reasoning for what makes Christianity "better for science" is inherently racial. You do know that these christian and jewish converts were ARABS too? Without genetics, you have no proof that they were anything ethnically different than the Arab invaders - the only difference being their choice of faith. You are feeding an alt right racial talking point, but conflating religion with ethnicity and intelligence. THAT is what is so stupid about your argument.

Well that is simply untrue. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi essentially created the decimal number system and modern algebra. He was a muslim persian living in Afghanistan. There are WAY more than just him, just because you cannot pronounce their names doesn't mean they aren't real. The middle east was the science capital of the world for centuries before Europe got its shit together.

because people who believe this know nothing about the history of islam.

The spread of Islam wasn't especially violent. If anything, it was abnormally tolerant for the time as evidenced by the time it took for those areas to become majority Muslim. The spread of Islam was mostly done by Sufi missionaries not by violent conversion.

That's a lie. The only thing Muslims do better than kill no believers is kill each other.

Those Christians who converted to Islam were Arabs.....

You are stoopid, and dont forget, you are stoopid

people do not say that islam is "the" religion of peace but rather that it is "a" religion of peace. this is mostly said to counter people who argue that islam is inherently violent and barbaric though i agree with the sentiment of the phrase i don't think it has any real meaning. the character of a religion can change completely under different circumstances because the way people live their religions largely depends on factors outside of the holy texts, beliefs etc. There can be a violent interpretation of Islam followed by violent people and a peaceful interpretation followed by peaceful people.

I wouldn't argue that Islam historically was extraordinarily violent compared to other religion and peoples. the most violent specifically islamic groups are not historic but current. they are mostly followers of salafi thought which is a phenomenon of the 20th century.

it certainly was and often still is quite political but so was christianity and this has nothing to do with being peaceful or not. Secularism is a relatively new idea that despite being widely embraced formally in governments, is not widely accepted among the world population outside of the west.

That's a bad comparison, the Arab invasions were centuries ago. Hong Kong was returned in the 90s. I doubt Greeks feel white guilt.

Zoroastrians and bhuddist afghans would disagree.

this tbhf

Also most of people conquered are now Arab and view the Conquest favourly
The Former European Colonies minus Latin America kept their native Identity and are massively butthurt about what the French and British did to them

>Arabs, on the other hand, do not have it in their disposition to feel guilt for such an abstract reason.
Probably because it happened over 1000 years ago and they have nothing to do with it?

>Probably why they are conquering us right now
Get out of your mother's basement.

>The Arabs and Turks only ever brought down the level of civilization of the areas they conquered, usually never to reach great heights ever again.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

There were conquests after Muhammad.

>Probably because it happened over 1000 years ago and they have nothing to do with it?
The last Islamic conquest, not including the modern violent expansion of Islam despite your claims to the contrary, occurred in the 19th century with the expansion of Oman along the Eastern coast of Africa where it remained until the 1870's.

The caliphate only fought defensive wars.

I have never seen such an intellectually dishonest post before and this is a board regularly filled with holocaust denial threads.

So literally by entirely dead people

Are you pretending that the European conquerors of Africa haven't been dead and buried for nearly 100 years?

Someone give me a quick run down of how the Arabs were able to conquer so much clay?
I know that Byz and Persia were already tapped out, im talking how in the hell did they amass armies, and even rule over all that
I mean, they came out of nowhere; pretty amazing really

It was the 7th century. Literally everything around them was falling the fuck apart.

Also the sack of kaffiristan happened around that time.

Very capable generals + Overpopulation

Too true, and when finally confronted to some foe worthy of them, then did they tremble.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours
CANNOT PRANK THE FRANK
CANNOT STALL THE GAUL
CANNOT WRENCH THE FRENCH

On another note, might anyone know why this battle is titled the "bataille de Poitiers" in french, yet has been named the "battle of Tours" by Englishmen? Is there some grand english conspiracy I've been obscured from?

Excellent Generals on the Arab part, along with unconventional tactics, against an enemy who underestimated them greatly.
They were also, contrary to what the internet will try to tell you, quite well liked by the people they conquered, and often welcomed.

The Omanis began their conquests of that region by ejecting the Portuguese.

What say you of Western conquests? Or is it only bad when Muslims do it?

>tours

overrated meme battle. muslims still rule part of france even after that battle

In the 7th century, the clay game was weak and the Arabs played by the updated rules of the time: tribal confederacy. They amassed an army that didn't just attack cities and sack them. In fact very few cities were attacked in this period for such an extensive conquest. Instead they campaigned around the countryside subjugating or allying with the native tribes and landholding clans already there. Once the cities of the area realized they were effectively foreign island enclaves inside their own walls they capitulated to the Arabs, who could then move on. The Arabs then either garrisoned in some outpost to maintain their command of the local tribes, or they settled alongside the local clans and intermarried.

This had a cumulative effect where each new tribe and clan would join the Arab forces on their next stop. You'll notice that the Arab conquests basically end wherever they ran out of local tribes or clans to join them, such as in Northern France were everyone was already locked down under Martel's iron fist.

Islam served as a very useful thing for unifying diverse peoples under one community.

Muhammad used his followers to pretty much become the absolute ruler of what was previously independent cities ruled by an oligarchy of wealthy families and a bunch of nomadic tribes.

This is pretty much just conjecture, but I believe that Islam is unique among the major religions in that, instead of forming naturally, it was entirely created by Muhammad for the purpose of controlling people.

>The Omanis began their conquests of that region by ejecting the Portuguese
No, they didn't. The Portuguese didn't have posts as far north as the Somalilands or . The furthest north they were was Mombasa. The Omanis crept down and then removed the Portuguese, not the other way around.

>What say you of Western conquests? Or is it only bad when Muslims do it?
>Literally whataboutism
Fuck off, Marxist fuccboi.

>On another note, might anyone know why this battle is titled the "bataille de Poitiers" in french, yet has been named the "battle of Tours" by Englishmen? Is there some grand english conspiracy I've been obscured from?

The Battle of Poitiers is already the name of a major English victory over the French in the HYW, is why. Also, it wasn't that battle that ground Arab advance to a halt so much as the fact that up until Charles Martel, the Arabs hadn't encountered another expansionist warrior culture organized along tribal lines in the West until they reached the Franks. Until then there would be capable enemy generals and the like, but they were always just soldiers on the defensive trying to hold cities and towns alone.

>overrated meme battle.
You mustn't downgrade the importance of symbols though. This battle, and the song of Roland, being ingrained as part of Frankish folklore are some of the things that made the franks relentless to banish Muslims from southern France.

Or at least I think :(

if you wanted something that truly halted the muslim expansion, read up on the arab siege of constantinople. tours was a small scale skirmish compared to that.

>overrated meme battle.
You mustn't downgrade the importance of symbols though. This battle, and the song of Roland, being ingrained as part of Frankish folklore are some of the things that made the franks relentless to banish Muslims from southern France.

Or at least I think :(>the Arabs hadn't encountered another expansionist warrior culture organized along tribal lines in the West until they reached the Franks.
Very interesting! Would this be also mirrored in how the Arab confederations would be halted on their first instances of pushing into the Caucasus against Tatar tribes?

>Very interesting! Would this be also mirrored in how the Arab confederations would be halted on their first instances of pushing into the Caucasus against Tatar tribes?
Yes, as well as the Ethiopians, the Sindh, and a bit later on the major Berber and Abbasid revolts.

At my soonest then! Thanks!

>Yes, as well as the Ethiopians, the Sindh, and a bit later on the major Berber and Abbasid revolts.
I know so little ._.
See you in seven years Veeky Forums.

its like everything worked against their enemies on the worst possible time

>millions die of disease
>war exhaustion
>suddenly bunch of raiders tribes united out fucking nowhere with religion tailored for conquest
>locals supporting them and giving keys to their city because dumbfuck byzzies religious persecution
>disastrous military defeat on top of these

My point was the Portuguese were playing the same game as the Omanis (in the same region as well). However, you refuse to say anything about the Portuguese and their expansionist activities while damning the Omanis for doing the exact same thing. It's bias.

>if you don't agree with me you're a marxist
Nice argument.

To add to this, a lot of what you might think about imperial expansion and conquest doesn't easily apply to the Rashidun conquests. How it went was that a charismatic Arab chieftain proposes to the Caliph to personally raise an army of his clan allies, and any independent adventurers, to then march on some country with the promise that the Caliph would receive a share of any loot and nominal authority over the province ruled by the conquering tribe in his stead.

This meant the invading Arab force was relatively small, leaving them reliant on finding some way to forge local alliances or else just raid and retreat quickly. With enough local support a conquest was feasible, after which the victors would settle and absorb (and simultaneously be absorbed by) the local allies.

I'd say that, at least until 660, it's better to look at a map of the Arab empire not as a continuous state like a Roman/Persian expy, but instead as a series of outposts with this or that Arab clan in charge all playing personal politics with the distant tribal homeland and the local clans around them.

It's only with the Umayyads that things take a turn towards the more usual understanding of state and empire, which brings me to The sieges of Constantinople were not the end of Arab or Muslim expansion. They were instead the weakening and then the end of Umayyad attempts to turn the Arab/Muslim confederacy into an empire on the Byzantine/Sassanid model - an emperor reigning over a centralized bureaucracy organizing state armies to seize control of territory for the state.

Khwarizmi took most of the decimal/algebra from already existing Indian knowledge. He didn't create it, he just improved on it (which is still a feat to acknowledge).

Except it was. Say what you like about the Islamic Golden Age, I'm not denying it's existence or the feats of many Muslim scholars. I'm not arguing whether the lands would've been better off without Islamic rule or not, but the fact it Islam bloodily and violently expanded.

Because they're ignorant of Islam and Islamic history. Even if you cite Quranic evidence for Muhammad's repugnant sense of morality, they will just brush it off and talk about the Salem Witch Trials instead.

In addition, take note of the division of the conquest timeline at 661 AD. This is when the Ummayad dynasty rises to take control of the Arab confederacy, maybe even coining the term Caliph and Caliphate for the first time as a Muslim and Arab version of Roman Emperor or Persian Shah. This is when the nature of expansion changes from Arab garrisons maintaining domination over the local tribes in Egypt and Mesopotamia to Arab colonies intermarrying with local Berber, Spanish, and Iranian clans in Tunisia, Iberia, and Khorasan.

This is also when Arab expansion was no longer just capable generals and their private forces out for personal glory, but also political and religious refugees fleeing Umayyad consolidation and domination in Mesopotamia for distant border provinces (or sometimes simple defection to the Byzantines if they were in Syria). By no means is it a mere coincidence that the Berber Revolt and Abbasid Revolution were centered in areas mostly beyond the 632-661 borders, and involved non-Sunni Arabs allied with Muslim non-Arabs or even non-Muslims from that same area.

Arabs, much like you, probably believe 'the west' is christian instead of capitalist. This is not a defense of christianity, which has been at times as terrible as capitalism.

It's impossible to discuss Islam in this era

Lol. Yes because Islam literally never gets discussed.

You know perfectly well what he meant

Not really.

Then you're a retard.

>essentially created the decimal number system and modern algebra

Literally stole them from the Indians.

But nice try, Mohammed

How rude and silly.

Why are buddhists so based?

Would gladly exchange all the scum flooding into Europe with them

He means that he's upset because islam is subjected to analysis and criticism like everything else instead of being given exceptional treatment. He may not be a muslim but he's definitely an apologist.

You're talking about a demagogue from a country that was never invaded by Islam, and is currently subjugating a small minority of poor, rural, ethnic Muslims. There is nothing based about him especially as a Buddhist.

Yeah, it's a symbol because it meant that the muslims would not find weak prey in Europe.

Also, because it was cool as shit, I think the only instance of medieval infantry turning back a cavalry charge singlehandedly
>The men of the north stood motionless as a wall

>currently subjugating a small minority of poor, rural, ethnic Muslims
Good. Best to keep the infection at bay, before it swallows them all

Retard

Meh. What a bunch of childish little cry babies.

Burma is a shithole though that is oppressive to every minrotiy and spergs here think only the Rohingya has an independence movement or violent.

EVERY MINORITY in Burma has a splinter/armed/independant group and the Rohingya one has been castrated for decades.