Quetzalcoatl (Aztec) / Kukulkan (Yucatec Maya) / Q’uq’umatz (K’iche’ Maya) / 9 Wind (Mixtec) – Plumed Serpent; god of wind, priests, merchants, and the link between the Earth and the sky. The universe came to be, God did not. I was in the office, not expecting them, and they came up looking for me, I was right there, and they asked me for Kimmie Weeks and I said “Never seen the guy, don’t know where he is.” Then immediately after they started deploying troops at my home, they shut down my school and deployed soldiers there. Many historians look at the conquests of the rulers who came after the Prophet as a proof of “conversion by force to Islam”. However, we have a different perspective on these conquests made by Muslims after the Prophet’s death. It is true that Muslims conquered these neighbouring lands and countries BUT does that mean that Islam, the religion, was spread by force? The superiority of Islam as religion, and therefore in providing for social order, would justify Muslim rule: would justify the simple, fair-dealing Muslims in replacing the privileged and oppressive representatives of the older, corrupted allegiances…

Muslims ruled India for about 800 years, but there never was a Muslim majority in that country. Look at Greece, a neighbour of Turkey, that was colonized by Muslim Turks for about 500 years, but you never hear or see of a sizeable minority of Muslims among the Greeks, even today. If we were to compare the attitude of the Muslim rulers towards the minorities living under their rule during the nineteenth century-with the attitude of the Europeans and the Americans towards their minorities, I dare to say that the record of the Muslims would be much better. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the Muslims gradually conquered Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran. Earlier generations of European scholars believed that conversions to Islam were made at the point of the sword and that conquered peoples were given the choice of conversion or death. Ottoman Empire dominated vast region of Christian land in Eastern Europe but it never forced its Christian citizens to convert to Islam; they were given the right to govern their own lives according to their own religious traditions. 2:11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 2:12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

Mahmud Kashgari’s 11th century atlas indicates the land routes of the Silk Road and Japan in the map’s easternmost extent. Lapidus mentions three theories to explain the acceptance of Islam in the Far East: the role of merchants, the importance of the missionaries, and the value of Islam to the common people rather than to the ruling elites5. The state coat of arms is a blue shield with three golden crowns, and the Folkung dynasty used a shield with a gold lion on top of a background of blue and wavy diagonal stripes. As humans progressed from being hunter-gatherers to farmers who domesticated plants and animals for food, they began to build villages in which to live. It is only natural to be insecure and jealous about other people’s achievements, but you should get over it because you are an accomplished human being yourself. My messengers are waiting for them in every port, to inquire after their names and cities, that they may not go away without receiving due honour at my hands.

In majority of cities, the inhabitants continued to follow their own religions. It is undeniable that the Muslim/Arab Empire spread by military force all over the Middle East; but this did not automatically translate into the spread of Islam as a religion. History provides sufficient proof that the Muslim empires were spread by military might, but that does not necessarily translate into the spread of Islam by force too. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Western Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Especially for the Jews and the Christians -whom Islam recognizes as Ahlul Kitab, the People of the Scriptures- Islam guaranteed them freedom of their faith and religious practices under Islamic rule. The Muslim conquerors signed treaties guaranteeing to the conquered people the freedom to practice their religion as long as they paid the required tribute to the caliph’s treasury. 2. Study the history of the Far East, and you will see that a Muslim army or navy never set its feet in Malaysia or Indonesia. Whether the U.S. definition of “inciting violence” will have to expand to accommodate the nature of digital communication remains to be seen.