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Now it is right to point out that after Muhammad's death, the Arabs conquered Persia, Syria, Palestine and the whole of North Africa and-- having gone as far as the Loire-- established an empire in which Islam was the ruling religion, and that this expansion of Islam took place at the cost of Christianity which, especially in North Africa, lost its most flourishing communities. But this historic event was not caused by the religious zeal and the proselytism of the Muslims. The rise of the Arabs in the seventh century was a national event comparable to the migration of nations, the migration to the south of Germanic tribes in quest of land. It was not a religious war. It is true that Islam was spread thereby, but not by a planned or even a forced conversion of the subdued peoples: "Apart from exceptions" the orientalist C.H. Becker emphasized, "it did not occur to the Arabs at all in the beginning to convert the subjected peoples. In the manner of modern colonizers they wanted to have control over the mass of paying zealots." Scholars like Hugo Winkler, Leone Caetani and C.H. Becker have convincingly proved that the motivating force underlying the expansion of Islamic dominion is to be sought not in religious but in economic causes. Becker writes: "The expansion of Islam as a state can in no way be mainly attributed to religious enthusiasm. The redeeming idea elucidating for us the whole reorganization of the Orient in the 7th century is that of mass migration... The Arab migration is.. the last large Semantic migration of people who, coming from the Arab peninsula, the cradle of the Semites, poured into the civilized countries." This migration was caused by a climate which has been altering throughout centuries and by the gradual hunger which drives the Arabs over the limits of their peninsula." Islam had no greater part in this event than the following: because of the teachings and work of Muhammad, the Arabs, who had been carrying on numerous tribal feuds with each other, overcame the tribal jealousy which had made every joint venture impossible, attained unity as a nation and, by means of the enormous impulse of the new divine revelation, developed powers which enabled them to conquer a large of the ancient world. Becker thinks that it is superfluous "to enter into the particulars of the old nursery tale according to which the Arabs had forced their religion by the sword onto the Middle East"-- the convenient main weapon of Christian polemics, for "everywhere the subjected peoples enjoyed the free exercise of their religion, as long as they placed themselves politically under the supreme authority of the Arabic-Islamic state". "At any rate, there was nothing to be seen of an urge to convert."
(153:1)
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