SPREAD OF ISLAM IN SHORT TIME (I)
A British man of knowledge, Lord Davenport, who studied all the religions very well, says in his book entitled Hadrat Muhammad and the Qur’ân, which he published in London in the early twentieth century:
“It is Islam’s being utterly strict on morals that caused it to spread in a short time. Muslims have always met those men of other religions who surrendered to the sword with forgiveness. Jurio says that Muslims’ behavior towards Christians is by no means comparable with the behavior which the Pope and the kings deemed proper towards believers. For example, on the twenty-fourth of August, that is, on the feast day of St. Bartholomew, in 980 [1572], sixty thousand protestants were massacred in Paris and in its neighborhood with the command of Charles IX and the Queen Catherine. Saint Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, was spreading Christianity, when he was martyred in Erzurum in August, 71 A.C. The Christian blood that was shed through many another persecution was much more than the Christian blood which Muslims shed in battlefields. For this reason, it is necessary to disabuse many deceived people of the wrong notion that Islam is a cruel religion. Such wrong statements have no documents. When compared with the papacy’s oppressions, which went up to the degree of savagery and cannibalism, Muslims’ behavior towards nonmuslims was as mild as those of an innocent suckling.
“Islam has been the symbol of a mental and ideal nobility that grew up as purely as a flower among the bogs of superstitions and doubts of other religions.
“Milton says: ‘When Constantine enriched the church, the priests increased their ambition for rank and wealth. Its punishment was suffered by Christianity which was torn to pieces.’