This is from ISLAM’S WAR ON TERROR, A Historical Consideration by ADNAN RASHID.

Basically this thread is a look at how Islam changed the world. I would paste different segments from the book. It is to enlighten muslims and non-muslims on how Islam transformed the world...

Introduction

Pope Gregory (594 CE), a contemporary of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, lamented:

What is there now, I ask of delight in this world? Everywhere we observe strife; fields are depopulated, the land has returned to solitude…And yet the blows of Divine justice have no end, because among the blows those guilty of evil acts are not corrected… (Pope Gregory I quoted by Mohammad Farooq Kemal, The Crescent vs The Cross, Lahore, 1997, p. 7.)

Gregory was referring to the oppression and tyranny he was facing at the hands of the Lombards and he was bemoaning the pitiful condition of his world, the world of the city of Rome. The pontiff was not alone in his lament, as almost every society in the world was experiencing some oppression and injustice. Syrian Orthodox Christians were witnessing heavy persecution due to their differences with the ruling Byzantine Chalcedonian Church. The Egyptian Orthodox Coptic Church was facing a similar fate and Jews were on the brink of extinction at the hands of the Catholic Church in Spain. Some rescue effort to liberate the world from this reign of tyranny was necessary; the promise of God (Isaiah 42) to fill the earth with justice was soon to be delivered and then a book that shook the world was sent with a man from the children of Kedar (the second son of Ishmael, Genesis 25:13) born in the city of Mecca. The book proclaimed loud and clear:

And We have sent you (O Muhammad [SA]) not but as a mercy for the worlds. (Quran, Surah AL-Anbiya 21, verse 107.)

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born in 571 and within a century of his birth the promised mercy was delivered. The foretold peace and justice was not only delivered to the Arabs, but the whole world reaped the fruits of this blessing from God. The Arabs were a people without any set moral values. There moral values and rules emanated from ancient semibarbaric traditions of their forefathers and were subject to change only if the powerful consented. These were a people who used to bury their daughters alive just because they were girls, not boys. Upon enquiry, the cousin of the Prophet ﷺ, Ja’far bin Abi Talib, informed the king of Abyssinia about the barbarity of his people and the positive change Islam had brought for them:

O King, we were an uncivilized people, worshipping idols, eating corpses, committing abominations, breaking natural ties, treating guests badly, and our strong devoured our weak. Thus we were until God sent us an apostle whose lineage, truth, trustworthiness, and clemency we know. He summoned us to acknowledge God’s unity and to worship him and to renounce the stones and images which we and our fathers formerly worshipped. He commanded us to speak the truth, be faithful to our engagements, mindful of the ties of kinship and kindly hospitality, and to refrain from crimes and bloodshed. He forbade us to commit abominations and to speak lies, and to devour the property of orphans, to vilify chaste women. He commanded us to worship God alone and not associate anything with him, and he
gave us orders about prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. We confessed his truth and believed in him, and we followed him in what he had brought from God, and we worshipped God without associating aught with him. We treated as forbidden what he forbade, and as lawful what he declared lawful. Thereupon our people attacked us, treated us harshly and seduced us from our faith to try to make us go back to the worship of idols instead of the worship of God, and to regard as lawful the evil deeds we once committed. So when they got the better of us, treated us unjustly and circumscribed our lives, and came between us and our religion, we came to your country, having chosen you above all others. Here we have been happy in your protection, and we hope that we shall not be treated unjustly while
we are with you O King. (The Life of Muhammad, A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, tr by A. Guillaume, (1955, 2004), p. 151-2.)

This is one of the most eloquent defenses of any religion in history. Ja’far not only painted an accurate picture of the Arabian society for his audience in the Abyssinian royal court, he also defended what he deemed to be better than the abominations of his people. To Ja’far Islam was a call of mercy and spiritual prosperity while the way of his forefathers was death and darkness. The people of Arabia were transformed within few decades and they became the torch bearers of a new civilization in the world, a civilization that changed the course of human history forever. The followers of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ liberated not only their own people from the prevalent tyrannical socio-political order, they also brought freedom to the neighboring world. The promised mercy and justice was manifested through them and their initiative; a war on oppression, tyranny and terror was declared in the Qur’an. The following paragraphs will shed some light upon one of the most effective wars on terror in the history of mankind.

Me think thier is an iota of sense in what you are typing. But why not tell ur fellow muslim brrothers(haram boko) up north all this

Post 2

A SEVENTH CENTURY WAR ON TERROR

The Muslims pushed forward with the Islamic call immediately after the demise of the Prophetﷺ. The Prophet ﷺhad taught his followers that “none of you will have faith till he wishes for his brother what he likes for himself” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of Faith, Hadith 12.)

The Muslims loved peace and justice for themselves and wished to share it with others. Also, the Qur’an stipulated that Muslims
must help the oppressed at all cost:

And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the cause of Allah, and for those weak, ill-treated and oppressed among men, women and children, whose cry is: “Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from You one who will help us ( Quran, Surah An-Nisa 4, verse 75.)

The Muslims were thus charged to help the oppressed people of the world. History testifies to the fact that the Muslim armies rescued the populations of Syria, Egypt, Spain and Persia from a reign of tyranny, as will be amply demonstrated below. Those who were liberated prayed for the Muslim armies and their success.

When the Muslims had taken some parts of the Sassanid Empire, Ishoyabh III, the Nestorian Patriarch of Khurasan, stated in a letter to Simeon, the Prelate of Persia, that:

...and the Arabs, to whom God at this time has given the empire of the world, behold, they are among you, as ye know well: and yet they attack not the Christian faith, but, on the contrary, they favour our religion, do honour to our priests and the saints of the Lord, and confer benefits on churches and monasteries.(Ishoyabh III quoted by T. W. Arnold, Preaching of Islam, London, 1913, p. 81-82)

Here Ishoyabh is simply acknowledging the facts on the ground. He made this statement to remind Christians to stick with their faith, as Muslims do not force them to convert.

Muslims fought the Persian Empire so that the masses can hear the word of truth and gain freedom from oppressive rulers. Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabri’s (d. 923) annals of Islamic history provide an example of this in one of the diplomatic exchanges between the Muslim representative, Rib’i bin Amir al-Tamimi, and the Persian General (Rustam), which took place just before the battle of Qadsiyah (636). It was this battle which caused the downfall of the Sassanid Empire. In response to Rustam’s query as to why the Msulims had come to Persia, Rib’i stated the motives of his mission:

Allah has sent us and brought us here so that we may free those who desire from servitude to earthly rulers and make them servants of God that we may change their poverty into wealth and free them from tyranny of [false] religions and bring them to the justice of Islam. He has sent us to bring his religion to all His creatures and to call them to Islam. Whoever accepts it from us will be safe and we shall leave him alone but whoever refuses we shall fight until we fulfill the promise of God (Mohammad bin Jarir al-Tabri, Tarikh al-Rusul wal-Muluk, ed de Goeje, (Leiden, 1892), v 1, p. 2270.)

The promise of God was to bring justice and peace to the world. Hugh Kennedy confirms that the alternatives offered by the Muslims to the enemy were conversion, submission and the payment of taxes, or continuing war. (Hugh Kennedy, The Great Arab Conquests (London, 2008), p. 50.)

Michael Bonner agreed: ‘When Muslim armies encountered non-Muslims outside the lands already under the rule of Islam, they were supposed to offer them the choice of conversion to Islam; payment of jizya and acceptance of dhimmi status; or trying the fortunes of war’. (Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History (Princeton, 2006), p. 90)

Hence the purpose of the Muslim struggle was not to convert people forcefully, rather the aim was to establish Islamic hegemony by removing despotic tyrants so that the masses can hear the word of Islam and make a voluntary choice. Those who accepted Islam were embraced as brothers and others were allowed to live in peace.

This much is clear historically that exploitation and plunder of resources usually followed an invasion. Nothing much has changed, as recent wars have demonstrated the reality of human greed to attain wealth and power at the expense of thousands of human lives. Muslims were not perfect but they were, arguably, better than all other contestants in this regard. The followers of Muhammad ﷺ not only liberated hundreds of thousands of people, they also brought prosperity and progress to the masses of freed lands.

Even some of the Enlightenment thinkers acknowledged what Islam had done for mankind. Adam Smith (whose portrait is illustrated on the back of current British £20 note), the 18th century founding father of the modern capitalism, had appreciated Islam as follows:

The ruin of the empire of the Romans, and, along with it the subversion of all law and order, which happened a few centuries afterwards, produced the entire neglect of that study of the connecting principles of nature, to which leisure and security can alone give occasion. After the fall of those great conquerors and the civilizers of mankind, the empire of the Caliphs seems to have been the first state under which the world enjoyed that degree of tranquility which the cultivation of the sciences requires. It was under the protection of those generous and magnificent princes, that the ancient philosophy and astronomy of the Greeks were restored and established in the East; that tranquility, which their mild, just and religious government diffused over their vast empire, revived the curiosity of mankind, to inquire into the connecting principles of nature. (Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith, London, 1869, p. 353)

Adam Smith (1723-1790) was one of the most outstandingly intelligent economists of his time. His works such as The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations are thought to be the cornerstone of western literature. The latter work (studied as a reference point to this day) seems to be very much concerned with an inquiry into how nations might acquire success and prosperity. Some of the ways of acquiring prosperity and scientific advancement, which he expressed in the aforementioned quote, are through a sense of security, tranquillity and justice, and he believed that the mild, just and religious government of the Muslim Caliphs (who governed with Shariah Law) made all of that possible. He went even further and reminded the Europeans of the benefits they had reaped from the civilisation of Islam:

The victorious arms of the Saracens carried into Spain the learning as well as the gallantry, of the East; and along with it, the tables of Almamon, and the Arabian translations of Ptolemy and Aristotle; and thus Europe received a second time, from Babylon, the rudiments of the sciences of the heavens. The writings of Ptolemy were translated from Arabic into Latin; and the Peripatetic philosophy was studied in Averroes [Ibn Rushd] and Avicenna [Ibn Sina] with
as much eagerness and as much submission to its doctrines in the West, as it had been in the East. (Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith, London, 1869, p. 353)

Adam Smith was not alone and certainly wasn’t the last one to recognise the fruits of Islam and their significance for the material as well as spiritual well being of mankind. The following paragraphs will illustrate as to how Islam’s war on terror and tyranny awakened mankind to recognise its true potential to attain peace and justice. Ignorance and fear however were tools used by the oppressors of mankind; Islam replaced them with love and enlightenment. It is this enlightenment which is much needed today, as the world is facing the same corrupting forces today as it was facing in the seventh century. One needs not to
be a rocket scientist to recognise the fact that if Islam could do it then, it certainly is able to do it again today. God was Merciful then, He is certainly as Loving today. It will be seen that the Muslims offered fair terms to the Other and these terms enabled the masses to coexist in peace. This peace and sense of security consequently produced one of the most successful civilisations in the history of the world. The following pages will discuss how the Muslims liberated the lands of Syria, Egypt and Spain from a reign of terror.

SYRIA RESCUED FROM BYZANTINE TERROR

The land of Syria was in very close vicinity to the Arabian Desert. The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and his companions had had encounters with the Byzantines, who were governing the land of as-Shaam (consisting of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine) at the time. Following the death of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, in the reign of the second Caliph, Umar bin Khattab, the Muslim armies began liberating the people of Syria. The Christians of Syria were divided in many different denominations and almost all of them were facing severe persecution at the hands of the ruling Byzantine Melkite Chalcedonian Church. Monophysites, Jacobites and Nestorians were facing the wrath of the Byzantine/Roman might. When Heraclius, the emperor, attempted to unite the Christians by hook or by crook, his initiatives were rejected and hence the threat of persecution. Thomas Walker Arnold stated that:

Indeed, so bitter was the feeling he [the emperor] aroused that there is strong reason to believe that even a majority of the orthodox subjects of the Roman Empire, in the provinces that were conquered during this emperor’s reign, were the well-wishers of the Arabs; they regarded the emperor with aversion as a heretic, and were afraid that he might commence a persecution in order to force upon them his Monotheletic opinions. They therefore readily – and even eagerly – received the new masters who promised them religious toleration, and were willing to compromise their religious positions and their national independence if only they could free themselves from the immediately impending danger.(Arnold, Preaching, p. 54.)

Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, a Jacobite (or a Syrian Orthodox Christian) patriarch from 818 to 845, also discussed some reasons as to why the Syrian masses preferred Muslims over Byzantines. He stated in his chronicle, which covers the period from 582 to 842, that Heraclius mustered three hundred thousand men from Armenia, Syria and the Roman heartlands to expel the Muslims out of Syria. Muslims decided to withdraw from cities to fight an open pitch battle. However, whilst pulling back, the Muslims decided, out of fairness, to refund the money which they had taken as tribute from the Syrian Christians:

Abu Ubaydah, whom Umar had put in command of the Arabs, ordered Habib b. Maslama to return to the Emesenes the tribute which he had exacted from them with this message:

“We are both bound by our mutual oaths. Now we are going to do battle with the Romans. If we return, this tribute is ours; but if we are defeated and do not return, we are absolved of our oaths.” So they left Emessa for Damascus; and the emir Abu Ubaydah ordered Saeed b. Kulthum to return the tribute to the Damascenes likewise…To them he said: “ If we return victorious we shall take it back. But if we are defeated and prove powerless to save you from the Romans, here is your tribute, keep it. We for our part shall be absolved of the oaths which we have sworn to you.” (Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles, Liverpool, 1993, p. 156-7.)

This was an unprecedented demonstration of honesty and justice. The non-Muslims pay the Jizya tax so that their lives, honour, religion, intellect and property are protected. In this case Muslims knew that they were unable to protect the Christians of Syria due to an imminent attack by Heraclius. It was not fair to keep the money in the absence of any ability to protect the masses. Also, one must note that this was taking place in seventh century Syria where plunder, robbery and injustice were a common occurrence and the Muslims had shocked the Syrians with their merciful conduct. Another point worth mentioning is that this incident is narrated by a ninth century Christian source, which testifies that the Muslims did not abuse power and they did not betray the trust Christians had bestowed upon them. Thomas Arnold adds, from an Islamic source (Abu Yusuf, Kitabul Khiraj [Book of the Taxes]), that:

In accordance with this order, enormous sums were paid back out of the state treasury, and the Christians called down blessings on the heads of the Muslims, saying, “May God give you rule over us again and make you victorious over the Romans; had it been they, they would not have given us back anything, but would have taken all that remained with us”(Arnold, Preaching, p. 61.)

It is difficult to imagine that the Christians would pray for the return of the Muslims, especially when one considers the fact that the latter were confronting a Christian enemy, the Byzantines. Why did the Muslims return such big sums to the Christians? Why didn’t they keep this wealth when they needed it the most, as they were facing a huge army? Who did they fear, as the Christians of Syria were not able to overpower them? The response to all these perplexing questions is that the Muslims feared God and followed his injunctions, which can be found in the Qur’an:

Verily, Allah commands that you should render back the trusts to those, to whom they are due; and that when you judge between men, you judge with justice. Verily, how excellent is the teaching, which He gives you! Truly, Allah is ever all- Hearer, all-Seer.(Quran, Surah An-Nisa 4, verse 58.)

Dionysius confirms what Arnold quoted from Abu Yusuf above:

So the Arabs left Damascus and pitched camp by the river Yarmuk. As the Romans marched towards the Arab camp every city and village on their way which had surrendered to the Arabs shouted threats at them. As for crimes the Romans committed on their passage, they are unspeakable, and their unseemliness ought not even to be brought to mind…The Arabs returned, elated with their great victory, to Damascus; and the Damascenes greeted them outside the city and welcomed them joyfully in, and all treaties and assurances were reaffirmed. (Dionysius, Chronicles, p. 157.)


It is very clear from what was discussed above that the Muslims not only came to Syria with an intention to liberate the masses from the Byzantine terror but they also enabled all Christian denominations to live in peace thereafter. The Christians of Syria preferred the Muslim rule over the oppressive Byzantine hegemony, as the Muslims had brought justice and good governance vis-à-vis the Roman tyranny. One cannot imagine the conquered welcoming the conqueror “joyfully”. It happened in Syria once upon a time.

EGYPT SAVED FROM CHALCEDONIAN PERSECUTION

Egypt was also governed by the Byzantines and the fate of the masses there was no different to what had happened in Syria. The ruling Church was utterly against the existence of any doctrinal dissent. The Egyptians were mostly Jacobites and did not agree with the Greek Byzantine Chalcedonian version of Christianity. The result of this disagreement was heavy persecution at the hands of the ruling elite. Arnold summarised the situation as follows:

The Jacobites, who formed the majority of the Christian population, had been very roughly handled by the Orthodox adherents of the court and subjected to indignities that have not been forgotten by their children even to the present day. Some were tortured and then thrown into the sea; many followed their Patrirach into exile to escape from the hands of their persecutors, while a large number disguised their real opinions under a pretended acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon. (Arnold, Preaching, p. 102.)

When the Muslims arrived in Egypt, led by ‘Amr bin al-‘Aas, they were greeted as liberators and the Copts supported their intervention. According to Dionysius, the Coptic Patriarch submitted Egypt voluntarily to the Muslims:

We have found in the tales and stories of Egyptians that Benjamin, the Patriarch of the Orthodox in Egypt at the time, delivered the country to the Arab general Amr b. al-As out of antipathy, that is enmity, towards Cyrus, the Chalcedonian (Byzantine) Patriarch in Egypt. (Dionysius, Chronicles, p. 158)

This enmity was obviously fuelled by the persecution of the Copts. John of Nikiu (690), a Coptic bishop in Nikiu (Egypt), was perhaps one of the sources of “the tales and stories” referred to by Dionysius above. John also asserted that one of the reasons of the Muslim success in Egypt was the hatred of the masses for the Byzantines:

When Muslims saw the weakness of the Romans and the hostility of the people to the emperor Heraclius because of the persecution wherewith he had visited all the land of Egypt in regard to the orthodox faith at the instigation of Cyrus the Chalcedonian Patriarch [in office 631/2-41], they became bolder and stronger in the war…And people began to help the Muslims.(John of Nikiou, quoted by Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Egypt in the Byzantine World, Cambridge, 2007, p. 442.)

In some cases the Egyptians not only refused to fight the Muslims, they facilitated the conquest. It is to be noted that these are contemporary Christian sources testifying that the Muslims were actually greeted by the Egyptian Coptic Christians. If the Byzantine had treated the masses with respect and dignity, only then the Jacobite Coptic population of Egypt would have considered fighting the Muslims. It was the tolerant attitude of the Muslims and the barbarity of the Byzantines which facilitated the rapid downfall of the latter in the land of the Pharaohs. John of Nikiu reported elsewhere in his chronicle that the Muslims destroyed some places because they met with stiff resistance (often from the Byzantines who didn’t wish to give up Egypt, a rich fertile land, so easily). Some of the secondary treatments of the history of Egypt at the time of the Muslim conquests take this information with caution, as the bigger picture presents a different view. It must be noted here, however, that even in war, when they might be facing severe opposition, Muslims are not allowed to kill women, children, elderly and non-combatants. This is clearly outlined in the Muslim constitution, the Holy Qur’an:

Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors. (Quran, Surah al-Baqara 2, verse 190.)

Also, in another place the Qur’an instructs the Muslims with regard to those non-Muslims who do not fight them because of their faith:

Allah forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you not for (your) faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them: for Allah loveth those who are just. (Quran, Surah al-Mumtahinah 60, verse 8.)

Muslims are not supposed to fight anyone who desires peace and co-existence and in the absence of any religious hostility and persecution, they are commanded to be kind to all. It is evident from the verses above that the Muslims, even in war, cannot kill indiscriminately. Atrocities and destruction of any kind are utterly forbidden in Islam. Even animals cannot be killed unless they are going be consumed as food. Targeting women and children is out of the question. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺleft clear instructions for his followers as to what transgression in war constitutes. In the book of Sahih al-Bukhari it is narrated on the
authority of Abdullah bin Umar that:

In one of the Maghazi [battles where the Prophet was present in person] a women who had been killed was seen. The Prophet ﷺ forbade the killing of women and children.(Bukhari, Book of Jihad[3014-5].)

The Prophet ﷺ had taught his companions well and had warned them to be careful with regards to the rights of humans as well as animals. Abu Bakr (r. 632-34 CE), the first successor of the Prophet ﷺ, instructed the Muslim army to observe the following rules, while on an expedition heading towards Syria:

I advise you ten things: Do not kill women or children or an aged, infirm person. Do not cut down fruit-bearing trees. Do not destroy an inhabited place. Do not slaughter sheep or camels except for food. Do not burn bees and do not scatter them. Do not steal from the booty, and do not be cowardly. (Muatta Imam Malik, Kitabul Jihad)

These are the rules of war in Islam and they cannot be overstepped. One of the greatest commentators of the Qur’an, Ibn Katheer, when commenting on the verse 190 of Surah 2 (see above), clarified the meaning of transgression in war:

‘Then Allah (ST) states that he does not like the transgressors. Meaning, do not disobey Allah, do not mutilate, betray and steal; do not kill women and children; do not kill those elderly who are neither able to fight nor take part in it; do not kill monks and those who are in seclusion; do not, unnecessarily, cut the trees nor kill animals and this is how Ibn Abbas, Umar bin Abdul Aziz and Muqatil bin Hayyan commented on this verse.’ (Tafseer (commentary) of Ibn Katheer, The Holy Quran, Surah 2, verse 190)

When Muslim armies advanced into other lands, this was the attitude they demonstrated and in most cases these rules were obeyed and upheld. These rules came from the Messenger of God ﷺ and by extension from Allah (God) himself. It is for this reason that some scholars take information from the ecclesiastical chroniclers (who were in most cases hostile toward the Muslim cause) with a big pinch of salt. Alfred J. Butler, whose work on the Arab Conquest of Egypt is to this day an authoritative reference point, studied the relevant chronicles and made many profound statements pertaining to the Islamic leadership’s tolerance and protection of the Christian population. Such as:

After all that the Copts had suffered at the hands of the Romans and the Patriarch Cyrus, it would not have been unnatural if they had desired to retaliate upon the Melkites [the Romans]. But any such design, if they cherished it, was sternly discountenanced by ‘Amr, [the Muslim conqueror of Egypt] whose government was wisely tolerant but perfectly impartial between the two forms of religion.

Many facts might be cited in proof of this contention…two forms of Christianity must be imagined as subsisting side by side under the equal protection of the conquerors. (Alfred J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion, 1902, Oxford, p. 447-8.)

It would seem, therefore, that in matters ecclesiastical the Copts were granted every reasonable freedom. (Alfred J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion, 1902, Oxford, p. 450.)

That the early government of ‘Amr was animated by a spirit of justice and even sympathy for the subject population, can hardly be questioned.(Alfred J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion, 1902, Oxford, p. 456.)

Butler, as a historian, was certainly convinced that the e Islamic hegemony brought effective protection for all denominations of Christianity in Egypt. If it wasn’t for the successful arbitration of the Islamic leadership, the Jacobites would have loved to annihilate the ruling Melkite Church in revenge. Arnold goes as far as to suggest that the Copts preferred the Muslims over the Byzantines:

‘The rapid success of the Arab invaders was largely due to the welcome they received from the native Christians, who hated the Byzantine rule not only for its oppressive administration, but also – and chiefly – on account of the bitterness of theological rancour...to the Copts, as the Jacobite Christians of Egypt are called, the Muhammadan conquest brought a freedom of religious life such as they had not enjoyed for a century.’ (Arnold, Preaching, p. 102.)

This is exactly what had occurred in Syria. The Syrians preferred the Muslims so did the Egyptians. It was the justice of Islam that appealed to both populations. Butler also narrates a fascinating repeat of the Muslim honesty in Egypt, whereby they returned the tribute (Jizya) to the Christian population of Alexandria following the Muslim recapture of the city (after the Romans had taken the city back once it had submitted to Muslims):

One characteristic anecdote must not be passed over in silence. After the recapture of Alexandria, the Copts of the various Delta villages which had been ruthlessly plundered by the Roman army, came to ‘Amr and complained that while they had stood loyal to the Arabs as bound under treaty, they had not received the protection to which under the same treaty they were entitled, and in consequence they had suffered severely. The justice of this remonstrance is obvious:

but it is not every victorious general whose conscience would be troubled by such a protest. Of ‘Amr, however, it is recorded that he was struck with remorse, and exclaimed: “Would that I had encountered the Romans as soon as they issued forth from Alexandria!” What is more, he at once ordered full compensation to be paid to the Copts for all their losses. This frank admission of responsibility and frank restitution prove at once the excellence of ‘Amr’s principles of government and the nobility of his nature. (Butler, Conquest, p. 488)

It is evident from the historical record presented above that the Muslims liberated the masses of Egypt from the terror of the Byzantine Church. The Copts not only welcomed the Muslims, they facilitated the conquest by joining the ranks of the conquerors. The primary as well as the secondary sources both confirm that the rule of the Islamic government was tolerant and progressive, unlike what the Byzantines had to offer. Muslims were bound by a certain code of conduct and they did their best to adhere to it. This behaviour of the Muslims was not accidental; rather this is exactly how they intended to do things. This is evident from the consistency of their conduct in different lands in different times. The people of Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) were also, just like the Egyptians and the Syrians, facing severe conditions at the hands of their ruling elite. The Muslims brought the mercy of God to the people al-Andalus and the promise was duly fulfilled.