doubt, even to the fighting enemy, but it is a distortion of facts to say that it was offered at the point of the sword, when there is not a single instance on record of Islām being enforced upon a prisoner of war; nor of Muslims sending a message to a peaceful neighbouring state to the effect that it would be invaded if it did not embrace Islām. All that is recorded is that, in the midst of war and after defeat had been inflicted on the enemy in several battles, when there were negotiations for peace, the Muslims in their faith related their own experience before the enemy chiefs. They stated how they themselves had been deadly foes to Islām and how they saw the truth and found Islām to be a blessing and a power that had raised the Arab race from the depths of degradation to great moral and spiritual heights, and had welded their warring elements into a solid nation. In such words did the Muslim envoys invite the Persians and the Romans to Islām, not before the declaration of war, but at the negotiations for peace. If the enemy then accepted Islām, there would be no conditions for peace, and the two nations would live as equals and brethren. It was not offering Islām at the point of a sword, but offering it as a harbinger of peace, of equality and of brotherhood. Not once in the wars of the early Caliphate did the Muslims send a message to a peaceful neighbour that, if it did not accept Islām, the Muslim forces would carry fire and sword into its territory. Wars they had to wage, but these wars were due to reasons other than zeal for the propagation of Islām. And they could not do a thing which their Master never did, and which their only guide in life, the Holy Qur’ān, never taught them.
The directions given to his soldiers by the Holy Prophet also show that his wars were not due to any desire to enforce religion. “ ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Umar reports that, in a certain battle fought by the Holy Prophet a woman was discovered among the slain. On this, the Holy Prophet forbade the killing of women and children (in wars)” (Bu. 56:147, 148). Ḥadīth relating to this prohibition are repeated very often in all collections (AD. 15:112; Tr. 20:18; Ah. I, p. 256; II, pp. 22, 23; III, p. 488; M. 32:7). Now if the wars of Islām had been undertaken