The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> The Sword of Islam

The Sword of Islam
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Friday, May 30 2008, 20:35:10 (CEST)
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This was the title given to one of the greatest Islamic generals, Khalid Ibn Walid. Lest we get too Jumblatted let’s not forget that Pope Julius II led his own armies to conquest and slaughter…and Charlemagne beheaded 4,500 Saxons in one day because they refused baptism. Ask any Christian historian.

Khalid was a brilliant general with a tendency to cruelty after conquest…the Caliph, hearing of this, demoted him, placing him under Ibn Mussa who appreciated Khalid’s brilliant generalship but was there to temper his severity. Every religion has had its brilliant and brutal generals…Islam is hardly to be singled out for this and the Crusaders carried the cross of Jesus before them everywhere they murdered and raped. In fact the Crusaders’ greatest success was their defeat and sack of Constantinople, which was NOT an Islamic city but a CHRISTIAN one. They did that too in the name and under the banner of Christ. Either Jumblat is horribly uneducated or is deliberately spreading propaganda, ignoring his own crimes while he attempts to magnify and invent those of his adversaries.

To Khalid’s credit, and that of Islam, when the Muslims conquered Jerusalem they acted very differently than the Christians had before them. When the Christians took Jerusalem they killed every Muslim man, woman and child…they next gathered together all Jews, locked them in their synagogue and burned them alive, every man, woman and child. By contrast when the Muslims conquered Jerusalem, they invited the Patriarch, who’d run away believing Muslims would do to him what Christians had done to Muslims and Jews, was invited back as the honored guest of the Muslim general, who rode with him through the streets of Jerusalem guaranteeing to all Christians and Jews the right and freedom to worship at their shrines and to build new churches etc. Ask any Christian historian.

Khalid also returned the tax his army levied on a Christian village he conquered, when he was forced to leave by a sudden appearance of a superior number of Christian soldiers. The tax was levied to defray the expenses of the army, a common practice in those days and far preferable to the Christian habit of burning out villages and leaving the people destitute….Khalid returned the money because he failed to protect the Christian villagers, as promised, from the CHRISTIAN army besieging it. Later, he returned, as he’d promised, and the villagers gladly paid the money and he drove the Christians off. Ask any Christian historian.

There are many such instances of Christians preferring Muslim rule to that of their own Bishops and princes….because the Mulims were fair and just. The famous jizya tax we hear so much about was far LESS than what Christians had to pay in feudal dues to their bishops and princes…and only able-bodied men of military age had to pay…women, orphans, the lame and blind, the old and poor were exempt. It was a small price to pay considering the Christians weren’t drafted into the army to be sent far from their farms and families…how many men would have LOVED to pay such a tax and be exempt from continuous and dangerous military service? Ask any Christian historian.

Khalid was a brilliant leader, a most successful general, and obedient to his Caliph, who acted to remove him from the temptation of dealing with those he conquered. Altogether a most compelling human bean and no worse than any Christian general…or pope…and a whole lot better because he obeyed his master and laid down his command while maintaining his loyalty and devotion.



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