d here against the Koreish was
only in the case of their not desisting, and it was only to prevent and
suppress their _fitnah_, and when their intolerance and persecution was
suppressed, or was no more, then the Moslem religion was to become all
of it God's. They were not forced to join any god with the true God.

[Sidenote: 37. Sir W. Muir quoted.]

Sir W. Muir, in his last chapter on the person and character of
Mohammad, observes in reviewing the Medina period: "Intolerance quickly
took the place of freedom; force, of persuasion." ... "Slay the
unbelievers wheresoever ye find them" was now the watchword of
Islam:--"Fight in the ways of God until opposition be crushed, and the
Religion becometh the Lord's alone!"[194] Here, Sir W. Muir plainly
contradicts himself. He has already admitted at the 136th page of the
fourth volume of his work that the course pursued by Mohammad at Medina
was to leave the conversion of the people to be gradually accomplished
without compulsion, and the same measure he intended to adopt at his
triumphal entry into Mecca. His words are: "This movement obliged
Mahomet to cut short of his stay at Mecca. Although the city had
cheerfully accepted his supremacy, all its inhabitants had not yet
embraced the new religion, or formally acknowledged his prophetic claim.
Perhaps, he intended to follow the course he had pursued at Medina, and
leave the conversion of the people to be gradually accomplished without
compulsion." This was at the end of the eighth year after the Hegira.

Mohammad died at the beginning of the eleventh year, then the question
naturally comes up, when was that alleged change to intolerance, and
how Sir W. Muir says, this change is traced from the period of
Mohammad's arrival at Medina? In the action taken in the fifth year of
the Hegira against the Jewish tribe of Koreiza, who had treasoned
against the city, Sir W. Muir admits that up to that period Mohammad did
not profess to force men to join Islam, or to punish them for not
embracing it. His words are: "The ostensible grounds upon which Mahomet
proceeded were purely political, for as yet he did not profess _to
force_ men to join Islam, or to punish them for not embracing it."[195]
In a foot-note he remarks: "He still continued to reiterate in his
Revelations the axiom used at Mecca, 'I am only a public preacher,' as
will be shown in the next chapter." Further, Sir W. Muir, in his account
of the first two years after Mohammad