No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

Although many challenge the notion that Islam was spread by the sword, there is no question that the sword featured prominently in Islam’s early history. It was with the sword that Muslim armies swept North Africa and conquered Persia in the years immediately after Muhammad’s death. The caliphs, Muhammad’s successors, were soon after beset with high-profile assassinations: Umar, the second caliph of Islam, was slain by avenging Persians; Uthman, the third caliph of Islam, was besieged and then slaughtered by Muslim rebels; Muhammad’s cousin Ali, the fourth caliph, was also assassinated by dissidents, but not before he had marched against the army of Aisha, Muhammad’s young bride. That was the first Islamic civil war, often called the First Fitna, and on that day ten thousand Muslims killed one another on the field of battle. With the spilling of their blood were sown the first seeds of Shia and Sunni discord. The sword was ever unsheathed in these earliest years of Islam. Following the age of the Companions of Muhammad, the Umayyad Caliphate governed the Islamic empire for a short ninety years until, through revolt and open war, the Abbasid Muslims took control and established a dynasty that lasted for 750 years. The reign of the seventh Abbasid caliph is fascinating, for it was he who imposed the Mihna, the Islamic Inquisition. Al-Mamun became caliph in AD 813, after a struggle for power that ended in the beheading of the previous caliph, his brother. From the start, al-M...