Combating Islam

Islam’s History: A Religion of Conquest, Not Coexistence

How the Historical Record Contradicts the PR Story

For decades, the dominant public script about Islam in the West has been:

“Islam means peace. It spread mainly through trade, preaching, and good example. The ‘Golden Age’ of Islam was a model of tolerance and coexistence.”

That narrative is emotionally comforting.
It is also historically false in its strong form.

When you look at what actually happened — armies, treaties, tax systems, legal hierarchies, and the lived status of non-Muslims under Islamic rule — a much harder reality emerges:

Islam, as it historically developed, is structurally a religion of conquest that tolerates coexistence only on its own terms: through subordination, tribute, and legal inferiority.

This is not about individual Muslims today. It’s about Islam as a system — its doctrine, its legal legacy, and its historical trajectory.

This post will walk through that case step-by-step:

How Islam actually spread in its first centuries
How its legal worldview divided humanity into conquerors and conquered
How “tolerance” under Islam really worked (dhimma, jizya, and the Pact of ʿUmar)
Why the “Golden Age of coexistence” is a myth with a partial kernel of truth
How conquest logic still shows up in law and attitudes today
Why the evidence forces a single conclusion: coexistence under Islam has always been conditional on submission to a conquest-built order

1. How Islam Actually Spread: The Historical Core Is Military Expansion

1.1 The Map No One Can Wish Away

Start with something simple and non-controversial: a map.

By around 750 CE, just over a century after Muhammad’s death, Arab-led Muslim polities controlled a vast territory stretching from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain/Portugal) in the west to the Indus Valley in the east. The early Muslim conquests — also known as the Arab conquests — smashed the Sasanian Empire completely and ripped huge provinces away from the Byzantine Empire.

Key facts:

Timeframe: roughly 622–750 CE
Region: Middle East, North Africa, parts of Central Asia and South Asia, and southern Europe
Result: creation of a massive Arab-Islamic empire (Rashidun, then Umayyad caliphates)

No serious historian disputes this basic outline. The only real debates concern why the armies succeeded so quickly and how religious identity evolved during that process. But everyone agrees:

The spread of early Islam as a political force was driven centrally by organized, sustained, military conquest.

You can argue about what role “faith” played in motivating the armies, but you cannot honestly say Islam spread primarily by gentle preaching or trade in those centuries. The empire is literally titled in modern scholarship as the result of the “early Muslim conquests.”

1.2 Not a Desert of Tolerance: Conquest in a Late Antique War Zone

Some modern defenders of Islam try a dodge:

“Everyone was conquering everyone then — Byzantines, Persians, Franks. Islam was just doing what everyone did.”

Yes, the 7th-century Near East was a war zone. Byzantium and Sasanian Persia had just exhausted each other in brutal, decades-long conflict when Arabs exploded out of Arabia.

But that “everybody did it” point doesn’t rescue Islam from being a conquest-religion. It just means:

Islam entered history as one more imperial project,
And quickly became one of the most successful.

The key difference is that Islam then canonized this expansionary moment into doctrine:

A theology of jihad
A legal system distinguishing between Muslims and non-Muslims
A permanent division of the world into lands under Islamic rule and lands to be brought under it

Christian and other empires also fought, but Christianity never developed a core legal doctrine positing perpetual warfare until the whole planet submitted to Christian theocratic rule. Islam did. That matters.

2. The Legal Worldview: Dar al-Islam vs Dar al-Harb

From very early in Islamic juridical thought, a basic division emerged:

Dār al-Islām — the “abode of Islam”: territories under Muslim rule where Islamic law is applied.
Dār al-Ḥarb — the “abode of war”: territories not under Muslim rule; in principle, areas of legitimate jihad.

Classic jihad doctrine (as summarized by multiple historians and commentators) sees jihad — in the legal sense of armed struggle — as a religious obligation to expand the territory of Islam, with truces allowed but true peace only achieved when Islam dominates.

Reductionist? It can be. But this is the lens used by classical jurists and many later scholars. The world is divided along political-religious lines, and the ideal endpoint is universal submission — either as Muslims or as subordinates (dhimmis) paying tribute.

That doctrine then shapes:

The way conquests are justified
The way non-Muslims are categorized and taxed
The kind of “coexistence” Islam offers: coexistence within a conquest order, not among equals

3. Coexistence Under Islam: Dhimma, Jizya, and the Pact of ʿUmar

If Islam’s early history is defined by conquest, its internal “coexistence model” is defined by dhimma — the protected but subordinate status of non-Muslims.

3.1 What Is Jizya?

The Qur’an itself commands fighting against certain non-Muslims “until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). Classical exegesis and legal schools developed this into a tax system:

Jizya is a poll tax levied on non-Muslim adult males in an Islamic state.
In exchange, they gain protection (dhimma) and exemption from military service.

Modern apologetics often frame jizya as just a “tax like any other.” Historically, that’s misleading. Even sympathetic scholars acknowledge:

It marked legal inferiority
It was collected in ways that underscored submission
It was explicitly tied to religious subordination

Jizya is not a neutral VAT. It is conquest codified: you lost the war, so you pay to be tolerated.

3.2 The Pact of ʿUmar: The Fine Print of “Tolerance”

The so-called Pact of ʿUmar (in multiple versions) became the classical template for managing Christians and Jews under Islamic rule. Whatever its exact origins (attributed variously to the 7th or 9th centuries), it was treated as normative by later jurists and rulers.

The pact lists conditions non-Muslims must accept in return for protection:

No building new churches or synagogues, and no repairing those in Muslim areas without permission
No public display of crosses or religious books
No loud ringing of bells, no public preaching, no public processions
No riding horses with proper saddles; often limited to donkeys with special restrictions (to mark status)
Distinctive clothing or belts marking them out from Muslims
No bearing arms
No positions of authority over Muslims
Obligations to show deference: stand up when Muslims wish to sit, not imitate Muslim dress or names, etc.

Scholars like Milka Levy-Rubin have traced how these restrictions evolved from individual surrender treaties after conquest into a more unified system, culminating in canonized versions like the Pact of ʿUmar by the early Abbasid period.

What does this show?

Coexistence under Islam is hierarchical and conditional:

You keep your life, property, and limited religious practice

In exchange for:

Accepting social and legal inferiority

Paying a special tax

Publicly signaling your conquered status

That is not coexistence between equals. It’s managed subordination.

3.3 Not Just Theory: The Muḥtasib and Day-to-Day Humiliation

In practice, these rules were not mere dead letters. Historical case studies show officials enforcing:

Dress codes
Noise restrictions on churches/synagogues
Restrictions on public religious symbols
Exclusion from certain offices

One study of medieval Islamic law in action notes cases where the muḥtasib (market inspector / moral enforcer) destroyed church bell installations for being too loud, pressured rulers to bar Christians from government posts, and supervised discriminatory clothing rules — all tied to the logic of the Pact of ʿUmar.

A Jewish heritage summary of the pact’s legacy notes that dhimmis were often barred from:

Riding horses or camels
Building or repairing houses of worship
Serving in the military or holding authority over Muslims.

Again: this is not equal coexistence. It is structured inequality designed to keep conquered populations visibly and permanently in their place.

4. The “Golden Age” Myth: Tolerance Compared to What?

There is a standard counter-narrative, popular in interfaith circles and some Jewish writing from the 19th–20th centuries:

“Jews and Christians had a Golden Age under Islam. It was much better than Christian Europe.”

Historian Mark R. Cohen, in Under Crescent and Cross, dissects this. He argues that two opposite myths dominated:

The “neo-lachrymose” myth: Islam was pure oppression for Jews.
The “interfaith utopia” myth: Islam was uniquely tolerant and harmonious.

Cohen rejects both as distortions, and points out that:

Yes, Jews often fared better under Islam than in medieval Christian Europe.
But this “tolerance” ignored the legal inferiority and periodic violence Jews still suffered under Islamic rule.

In other words:

The comparison is often relative — “less horrible than Europe” — not an endorsement of genuine equality.
The legal hierarchy of dhimma never disappears.

So the Golden Age story is not so much a lie as a half-truth used to launder conquest:

“We were conquered and subordinated, but the conquerors were sometimes less brutal than others.”

That does not magically transform a conquest-based, discriminatory system into a religion of coexistence.

5. Conquest Logic in Law and Attitudes Today

If Islam’s historical model was conquest plus subordination, we should expect echoes of that logic to still appear today — especially in places where traditional law is still taken seriously.

We don’t need to guess. We have data.

5.1 Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws: The Legal Sword Over Dissent

According to Humanists International and related reports:

In at least 10–13 countries, apostasy or blasphemy laws tied to Islam still carry the death penalty, including:
- Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Yemen, Pakistan, Nigeria (some states), Somalia, Brunei.

These laws:

Are explicitly grounded in classical Islamic jurisprudence, where apostasy and public insult of Islam or the Prophet are capital offenses.
Function as continuations of the original logic:
- The Islamic order is supreme.
- Leaving it or defying it is treason against God and the community.
- The penalty is elimination, not coexistence.

A system that retains death penalties for leaving the religion is not a system built around coexistence. It is a system designed to lock in conquest across generations.

5.2 Popular Attitudes: Support for Sharia and Harsh Penalties

You might argue: “Yes, but ordinary Muslims don’t support this anymore.”

That’s empirically false in many regions.

A landmark Pew Research Center study, The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics, and Society, found:

Large majorities of Muslims in several countries support making Sharia the official law of the land (especially in South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa).
Among those who support Sharia, significant minorities and sometimes majorities support death for apostasy — leaving Islam for another religion.

Exact percentages vary dramatically by country, but the pattern is clear:

Where Islamic identity is strongest, support for coercive, conquest-logic laws remains high.
This is not a fringe extremist view; in some states it is mainstream.

So:

The legal continuation of conquest logic (apostasy, blasphemy, inequality) is not just imposed from above by dictators; it has broad social backing in many societies.

5.3 Religious Minorities Today: Dhimma in Modern Clothing

Even where formal dhimma systems are gone, their logic survives:

Non-Muslims (or heterodox Muslims like Bahá’ís, Ahmadis, secularists) face systemic discrimination in jobs, law, and daily life in many Muslim-majority countries.
Laws and practices often:
- Restrict building or repairing churches and temples
- Penalize “missionary activity”
- Criminalize “insulting Islam”
- Bar non-Muslims from certain political offices

Recent cases, such as the prosecution of a Bahá’í leader in Qatar for allegedly “casting doubt on the foundations of the Islamic religion” through social media, show that even wealthy, globally integrated Gulf states still use legal levers to crush open non-Islamic religious expression.

Again, this is not coexistence among equals. It’s managed tolerance in a conquest framework: you may exist, but you must not challenge the supremacy of Islam.

6. Logical Analysis: Conquest vs. Coexistence

Time to pull the threads together and make the logic explicit.

6.1 Premises Based on Evidence

Historical Expansion:
The early spread of Islam as a political power in the 7th–8th centuries was driven centrally by military conquest, resulting in one of the largest empires of its time.
Legal Structure:
Classical Islamic doctrine divides the world into Muslim territory and non-Muslim territory, with jihad as a legitimate means to expand the former.
Treatment of Conquered Populations:
Non-Muslims under Islamic rule historically lived as dhimmis, paying jizya and accepting extensive legal and social restrictions laid out in normative instruments like the Pact of ʿUmar and related regulations.
Lack of Equality:
Serious historians of Jewish-Muslim relations and non-Muslim status under Islam (e.g., Mark R. Cohen, Milka Levy-Rubin) agree that, while there were periods of relative peace and beneficial cultural exchange, non-Muslims remained legally inferior and subject to periodic violence. The “interfaith utopia” narrative is a myth that hides this inequality.
Modern Continuity:
Today, multiple Muslim-majority states still enforce apostasy and blasphemy laws (including death sentences), and large segments of Muslim populations express support for coercive Sharia-based penalties in surveys.

6.2 What Follows?

From these premises, the following conclusion is logically forced:

Islam’s historical pattern, doctrinal framework, and legal legacy align with a religion of conquest that tolerates subordinate coexistence, not a religion whose primary mode is equal coexistence with other faiths.

Notice what this does not claim:

It does not say Muslims are uniquely violent or personally incapable of coexistence.
It does not deny that there were times and places where non-Muslims prospered under Muslim rule compared to other options.

It does say:

The structural logic of Islam’s law and history is expansion, dominance, and hierarchy:
- Conquest of territory
- Subjugation or conversion of inhabitants
- Conditional protection of those who submit and pay
- Legal suppression of open challenge or exit

That is what a religion of conquest looks like.

6.3 Fallacies to Avoid

Several common fallacies muddy this discussion:

Whataboutism:
“Christians/Jews/Hindus also conquered and persecuted.”
True — but irrelevant to whether Islam’s own structure is conquest-oriented. Other people’s crimes don’t erase your own.
Golden Age romanticism:
Focusing on exceptional episodes of relative peace (e.g., parts of al-Andalus) and ignoring the legal reality of dhimmi status and periodic massacres. This is cherry-picking.
Category error:
Confusing individual coexistence (many Muslims live peacefully with others) with systemic coexistence (Islamic law granting equal status and freedom to all faiths). The former exists; the latter largely does not.

Once you strip those away and look at the sources + data, the pattern is consistent.

7. Conclusion: Coexistence Under a Sword Is Not Coexistence

You can always find individual Muslims who sincerely want pluralism and peace. You can find rulers who, for pragmatic reasons, went easy on conquered populations. You can find Jewish and Christian scholars who wrote warmly about life in certain Islamic courts — often in comparison to brutal Christian environments.

None of that changes the structural reality:

Islam’s formative centuries are defined by military expansion.
Its legal system encodes a hierarchy of believers over non-believers.
Its “tolerance” historically comes with a price tag: tax, restrictions, humiliation, and explicit acknowledgment of subordination.
Its modern legal legacy still reflects that logic in apostasy laws, blasphemy laws, and systemic discrimination against non-Muslims and dissenters in many countries.

If the word “coexistence” is to mean anything more than “You may live as long as you know your place”, then Islam’s historical record does not qualify it as a religion of coexistence.

It qualifies it as:

A religion of conquest that has, at various times, allowed constrained coexistence under the shadow of its own supremacy.

That is the uncomfortable clarity the evidence points to — not because we want it to, but because that is what the documents, laws, and outcomes actually show.

You can still choose to believe Islam is true or divinely mandated.
But you cannot, without denying the record, claim that its history is primarily a story of equal coexistence rather than conquest and subordination.

Selected Bibliography

Cohen, Mark R. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Princeton University Press, 1994.
Donner, Fred M. Narratives of Islamic Origins and related studies on the Arab conquests.
Hoyland, Robert G. In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Levy-Rubin, Milka. Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
“Pact of ʿUmar.” Multiple translations and analyses, including Fordham Medieval Sourcebook and modern summaries.
“Jizya.” Encyclopedic summaries with references to Qur’anic and hadith discussions.
Pew Research Center. The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (2013).
Humanists International. Freedom of Thought Report and related briefs on apostasy laws.

(Other works on dhimmitude, jihad, and Islamic legal history are cited inline.)

Disclaimer
This post critiques Islam as an ideology, doctrine, and historical system—not Muslims as individuals. Every human deserves respect; beliefs do not.