It is often said nowadays that Islam has always been a peaceful and tolerant religion in which non-Muslim minorities flourished undisturbed, with Jews and Christians respectfully treated as equals by the Muslim majority. The well-known scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis, criticises this myth as a recent invention which has no base in history:

It is only very recently that some defenders of Islam have begun to assert that their society in the past accorded equal status to non-Muslims. No such claim is made by spokesmen for resurgent Islam, and historically there is no doubt that they are right. Traditional Islamic societies neither accorded such equality nor pretended that they were so doing. Indeed, in the old order, this would have been regarded not as a merit but as a dereliction of duty. How could one accord the same treatment to those who follow the true faith and those who wilfully reject it? This would be a theological as well as a logical absurdity. '

Let us examine how Islam treats non-Muslims of various kinds, both in history and in theology. Muhammad set the tone shortly before his death by stating his intention of cleansing the Arabian peninsula of all non-Muslims.

It has been narrated by 'Umar b. al-Khattab that he heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say: I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim. (Sahih Muslim, Book 019, Number 4366).

The traditional Islamic view is that God has made Muslims superior to all other people. According to the Qur'an, Muslims are "the best of peoples" (Q 3:110).2 All relationships with non-Muslims have to serve the principle of honouring and strengthening Islam and Muslims. Muslims must be dominant and non-Muslims subordinate. In an Islamic state, only Muslims have full citizenship rights.

Even today, many Muslims accept it as natural and normal for non-Muslims to be despised and discriminated against. They feel that it is quite proper for non-Muslims to be restricted in the public expression of their faiths and quite improper for a Muslim to submit to a non-Muslim in marriage, at work or in the political sphere.

Muslim attitudes to non-Muslims are based on the Qur'an, on Muhammad's example, on the example of the early Islamic state under the four "rightly-guided caliphs", and on Islamic law (shari'a) as it developed in the classical age.

Muhammad and non-Muslims: - Pagans

Muhammad totally rejected the polytheistic pagan idolatry of pre-Islamic Arabia. During his early years in Mecca he patiently suffered persecution at the hand of the Arab pagans without retaliation. However, once he had moved to Medina and gained political power there, he demanded that all Arab pagans submit and convert to Islam or else be killed. The final development in Muhammad's attitude to pagans is given in the Qur'an's so-called "sword verse":

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war). (Q 9:5)

Jews and Christians

Muhammad saw the monotheistic faiths, Islam and Christianity, as a different category from paganism. At first he even recognised their validity, but in Medina he gradually turned against his Jewish allies who persistently refused to accept his claim to be a prophet and would not practise the new religious customs he introduced. This friction with Jews, and later with various Christian communities, hardened his position as to the absolute superiority of Islam. Muhammad fought the Jewish tribes, massacred many of their men, enslaving their women and children, and expelled others from their lands near Medina to areas further north. The gradual hardening of Muhammad's attitude can be seen in the Qur'an where the later chapters, dating from his time in Medina, are much harsher towards pagans, Jews and Christians than the chapters dating from his early years in Mecca.

Is this the future for Britain?

It is a pity that man created religion in his own distorted image and placed his own preconceptions and interpretations in a form of super natural logic to justify his existence upon earth. The god aspect of our brains needs to be understood and in this respect we still do not know enough about neural science and that which pertains to higher level brain systems and functions. We have a need to create our ideals but it will be nothing to do with an omnipotent deity guiding and creating us, because we are curious by nature and instinct, we hate gaps in our knowledge and understanding, because we are almost unique in the animal world in understanding the coming cessation of life or death, we need comforting and reassurance which goes part of the way to explaining our need for something greater than ourselves and a sense of a preordained destiny. Human beings looking into an abyss asks the question> is that it, what is the point and purpose to our lives, hence religion?



Before organised religion we had unorganised superstitions, unstructured beliefs and we needed a form of coherency and structure and from this jumble of thoughts, beliefs and fragmented thinking various religious beliefs began to be born and given an identity and structure but we needed to focus on something far greater than ourselves to give legitimacy to ourselves and others for hopefully our salvation beyond our short lives.



Argue all you like about points of religious meaning, but is it truly real or a sophisticated figment of our imagination and a clever cerebral survival trick and Charles Darwin et al were right all along, we evolved through natural mechanisms we not yet truly/fully understand?