ion. His sole mission was
to enlighten the Arabs to the true worship of the one God, to recommend
virtue and denounce vice, which he truly fulfilled. That he and his
followers were persecuted, that they were expelled from their houses and
were invaded upon and warred against; that to repel incursions and to
gain the liberty of conscience and the security of his followers' lives
and the freedom of their religion, he and they waged defensive wars,
encountered superior numbers, made defensive treaties, securing the main
object of the war, _i.e._, the freedom of their living unmolested at
Mecca and Medina, and of having a free intercourse to the Sacred Mosque,
and a free exercise of their religion: all these are questions quite
separate and irrelevant, and have nothing to do with the subject in
hand, _i.e._, the popular _Jihad_, or the crusade for the purpose of
proselytizing, exacting tribute, and exterminating the idolaters, said
to be one of the tenets of Islam. All the defensive wars, and the verses
of the Koran relating to the same, were strictly temporary and
transitory in their nature. They cannot be made an example of, or be
construed into a tenet or injunction for aggressive wars, nor were they
intended so to be. Even they cannot be an example or instruction for a
defensive war to be waged by the Mohammadan community or commonwealth,
because all the circumstances under which Mohammad waged his defensive
wars were local and temporary. But almost all European writers do not
understand that the Koran does not teach a war of aggression, but had
only, under the adverse circumstances, to enjoin a war of defence,
clearly setting forth the grounds in its justification and strictly
prohibiting offensive measures.

[Sidenote 90. The Common Law and Jihad.]

All the fighting injunctions in the Koran are, in the first place, only
in self-defence, and none of them has any reference to make warfare
offensively. In the second place, it is to be particularly noted that
they were transitory in their nature, and are not to be considered
positive injunctions for future observance or religious precepts for
coming generations.[289] They were only temporary measures to meet the
emergency of the aggressive circumstances. The Mohammadan Common Law is
wrong on this point, where it allows unbelievers to be attacked without
provocation. But this it places under the category of a non-positive
injunction. A positive injunction is that which is