A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Chapter 6/37
[Sidenote: 37. Sir W. Muir quoted.]
Sir W. Muir, in his last chapter on the person and character of Mohammad, observes in reviewing the Medina period: "Intolerance quickly took the place of freedom; force, of persuasion." ... "Slay the unbelievers wheresoever ye find them" was now the watchword of Islam:—"Fight in the ways of God until opposition be crushed, and the Religion becometh the Lord's alone!"[1] Here, Sir W. Muir plainly contradicts himself. He has already admitted at the 136th page of the fourth volume of his work that the course pursued by Mohammad at Medina was to leave the conversion of the people to be gradually accomplished without compulsion, and the same measure he intended to adopt at his triumphal entry into Mecca. His words are: "This movement obliged Mahomet to cut short of his stay at Mecca. Although the city had cheerfully accepted his supremacy, all its inhabitants had not yet embraced the new religion, or formally acknowledged his prophetic claim. Perhaps, he intended to follow the course he had pursued at Medina, and leave the conversion of the people to be gradually accomplished without compulsion." This was at the end of the eighth year after the Hegira.
Mohammad died at the beginning of the eleventh year, then the question naturally comes up, when was that alleged change to intolerance, and how Sir W. Muir says, this change is traced from the period of Mohammad's arrival at Medina? In the action taken in the fifth year of the Hegira against the Jewish tribe of Koreiza, who had treasoned against the city, Sir W. Muir admits that up to that period Mohammad did not profess to force men to join Islam, or to punish them for not embracing it. His words are: "The ostensible grounds upon which Mahomet proceeded were purely political, for as yet he did not profess to force men to join Islam, or to punish them for not embracing it."[2] In a foot-note he remarks: "He still continued to reiterate in his Revelations the axiom used at Mecca, 'I am only a public preacher,' as will be shown in the next chapter." Further, Sir W. Muir, in his account of the first two years after Mohammad's arrival at Medina, admits in a foot-note (p. 32, Vol. III), that "as yet we have no distinct development of the intention of Mahomet to impose his religion on others by force: it would have been dangerous in the present state of parties to advance this principle."