Human history has witnessed several events of expansion—political, industrial, social and religious. However, political expansion has most often been misconstrued as religious expansion. In the case of Islam, there is no proof that sword or force was used to spread the religion. There were dynasties which in order to fulfil their political ambitions conquered many lands. For instance, the Battle of Chausa was fought between the Mughal emperor Humayun and the Afghan Sher Shah Suri (1539). Both the kings were of the same faith. If the purpose of conquering lands and expanding empires was to spread Islam, then there should have been no reason for these two Muslim rulers to engage in military combat. This example shows that conquests by Muslim rulers and emperors in history have been for serving political ends and to expand their dynasties. These were not religiously motivated wars and battles.
Swami Vivekananda, in the book Letters of Swami Vivekananda, wrote: “It is nonsense to say that Hindus were converted to Islam by force.”
Similarly, Egypt was a large country to enter within the fold of Islam. Sir Arthur Keith, while studying the phenomenon remarked: “Egyptians were conquered not by the sword but by the Quran.” (A New Theory of Human Evolution, p. 303. ed. 1948)
In the history of Islam, the Tatar invasion is considered the most devastating. There was no one left in the entire Muslim world to resist them. Hence, there was no question of the Tatars accepting Islam out of fear of Muslim swords. Instead, they were so profoundly influenced by the teachings of Islam that they embraced the faith willingly. As one Orientalist aptly observed: "The religion of the Moslems had conquered where their arms had failed." (History of the Arabs, Hitti, London, 1989, p. 488)
An example of how deep this misconception of the forceful spread of Islam is as follows: once Maulana Wahiduddin Khan happened to correspond with a person from a different faith who hailed from Hyderabad. He was quite adamant in his belief that Islam had spread through violence in India, and he shared the reference of a book in this regard. It was titled, The Indian Musalmans by William Wilson Hunter. Maulana read this book himself and found out that it actually talked about the peaceful penetration of Islam in India. He wrote back to him with the clipping and thereafter he did not revert.
History does not prove that the sword was used for the religious expansion of Islam. Political expansion was a different case, specific to individuals and dynasties. Owing to this mistaken notion, political expansion is seen as an act of forced religious expansion. In reality, Islam spread on the basis of the ideology of the Oneness of God (tawheed) and it was the Sufis who played a major role in the peaceful spread of Islam. The Sufis, as is well known, did not make any use of force; they were simply spiritual guides.
Source: The Seeker’s Guide
