to Islam was not at all the immediate goal of the Arab conquerors; the extension
of Muslim
power and authority was. We are really talking more about secular
change—change of rulers—than of religion itself at the social level. As Lapidus
points out, “The Arab conquerors did not require the conversion as much as the
subordination of non-Muslim peoples.
At the outset, [the Arab conquerors] were
hostile to conversions because new Muslims diluted the economic and status
advantages of the Arabs.”
Indeed, for the new Arab administrators of these regions, there was a positive
incentive
not to extend the special benefits of being Muslim to the population at
large. Arab forces had privileges and benefits that the conquered populations did
not, while the latter had to pay a tax (
jizya) levied upon non-Muslims in lieu of
service in the army and in return for receiving protection. The minorities were
required to recognize Muslim political rule and to refrain from any efforts to
convert Muslims to Christianity. As Arnold Toynbee in his magisterial
Study of
History points out:
In the first place we can discount the tendency—which has been
popular in Christendom—to over-estimate the extent
of the use of force in
the propagation of Islam. The show of adherence to the religion exacted
by the Prophet’s successors was limited to the performance of a small
number of not very onerous external observances…. In the conquered
provinces of the Roman and Sassanian Empires the alternatives offered
were not “Islam or death” but “Islam or a super-tax”—a policy
traditionally praised for its enlightenment when pursued long afterwards
in England by a Laodicean [religiously disinterested] Queen Elizabeth.
The Arabs did not initially wish to share power. The new Muslim
administration maintained life more or less as before, only under new rule—a
process familiar to all peoples living in regions where power at the top often
changes hands
through the fortunes of war, without necessarily changing life
below. In fact, few conversions took place at all. As Lapidus states:
The second principle of ‘Umar’s settlement was that the conquered
populations should be as little disturbed as possible. This meant that the
Arab-Muslims did not, contrary to reputation, attempt to convert people to
Islam. Muhammad had set the precedent of permitting Jews and
Christians in Arabia to keep their religions, if they paid tribute….
At the time of the conquest, Islam was meant to be a religion of the
Arabs, a mark of caste unity and superiority. The Arabs had little
missionary zeal.
When conversions did occur, they were an
embarrassment because they created status problems and led to claims for
financial privileges.
It’s noteworthy that at this point the early Arab conquerors were still strongly
ethnically oriented and perceived Islam to be an
Arab religion of which they
were the privileged recipients; this outlook reflected Arab awareness of Moses’
revelations about a religion that was to be special for the Jewish people. Islam
was now perceived as the prized privilege of the Arabs. But it was this
privileged Arab position, and the second-class citizenship status of even
non-
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