object is to remove the general and
erroneous impression from the minds of European and Christian writers
regarding Islam, that Mohammad waged wars of conquest, extirpation, as
well as of proselytizing against the Koreish, other Arab tribes, the
Jews, and Christians;[1] that he held the Koran in one hand and the
scimitar in the other, and compelled people to believe in his mission. I
have endeavoured in this book, I believe on sufficient grounds, to show
that neither the wars of Mohammad were offensive, nor did he in any way
use force or compulsion in the matter of belief.

[Footnote 1: "He now occupied a position where he might become the agent
for executing the divine sentence, and at the same time triumphantly
impose the true religion on those who had rejected it." The Life of
Mahomet, by Sir W. Muir, page 211. London, 1877. (New Edition.)

"The free toleration of the purer among the creeds around him, which the
Prophet had at first enjoined, gradually changes into intolerance.
Persecuted no longer, Mohammad becomes a persecutor himself; with the
Koran in one hand, and scymitar in the other, he goes forth to offer to
the nations the three-fold alternative of conversion, tribute,
death."--Mohammed and Mohammedanism, by Mr. R. Bosworth Smith, page 137.
Second Edition.]

[Sidenote: Early wrongs of the Moslems.]

[Sidenote: Justification in taking up arms, if taken.]

2. All the wars of Mohammad were defensive. He and those who took
interest in his cause were severely oppressed at intervals, and were in
a sort of general persecution at Mecca at the hands of the ungodly and
fierce Koreish. Those who were weak and without protection had to leave
their city, and twice fly to the Christian land of Abyssinia, pursued by
the wrathful Koreish, but in vain. Those who remained at Mecca were
subject to all sorts of indignities, malignity and a deprivation of all
religious and social liberty, because they had forsaken the inferior
deities of the Koreish, and believed in the only ONE GOD of Mohammad, in
whose mission they had full belief. Mohammad and his followers had every
sanction, under the natural and international law, then and there to
wage war against their persecutors with the object of removing the
(_fitnah_) persecution and obtaining their civil rights of freedom and
religious liberty in their native city.

[Sidenote: Commencement of the state of war.]

[Sidenote: The Koreish being public enemies were liable to