The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  THE CONQUEST OF IRAQ

  Abu Bakr needed Khalid too much to stay angry with him over his amatory adventures. While his general was still at Yamamah, the caliph sent him new orders: “Go on toward Iraq until you enter it. Begin with the gateway to India, which is al-Ubdullah.25 Render the people of Persia [Fars] and those nations under their rule peaceable.”26

  Iraq was within the domains of Sassanid Persia; it would become the first land outside of Arabia to experience jihad. Khalid stormed through the land, defeating the Persians in four initial battles. In May 633, he reached the city of al-Hirah, the capital of the northern Euphrates region; its Sassanian governor, Qabisah ibn Iyas, and the noblemen of the city came to welcome him. Khalid wasted no time explaining why he and his men were there: “I call you to God and to Islam. If you respond to the call, then you are Muslims: You obtain the benefits they enjoy and take up the responsibilities they bear. If you refuse, then [you must pay] the jizyah. If you refuse the jizyah, I will bring against you tribes of people who are more eager for death than you are for life. We will then fight you until God decides between us and you.”27 Another account has Khalid saying, “If you refuse the jizyah, then we will bring against you a people who love death more than you love drinking wine.”28

  Qabisah was unprepared for war. “We have no need to fight you,” he told Khalid. “Rather, we will keep to our religion and pay you the jizyah.”29 The people of al-Hirah, a Christian stronghold within a Zoroastrian empire, agreed to pay the Muslims ninety thousand dirhams.

  In presenting Qabisah with this triple choice, Khalid was obeying the commands of the Qur’an and Muhammad: offer the People of the Book (Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians) conversion to Islam; subjugation under the rule of the Muslims, signified by the payment of the tax, the jizyah, from which the Muslims were exempt; or war. Given the paucity of contemporary evidence of Muhammad’s life, or of the existence of the Qur’an before the early eighth century, it is quite possible that Khalid was the originator of this triple choice, rather than a believer obediently following the dictates of his prophet; in any case, this choice became codified in the Qur’an and Islamic law, and remains the primary stance of Islam toward the People of the Book to this day.

  Khalid wrote more harshly to the Sassanian rulers: “From Khalid b. al-Walid to the rulers of the Persians: Peace be upon whosoever follows right guidance.”30 This was to become the mandated greeting for Muslims toward non-Muslims; when greeting a fellow Muslim, Muslims were to say, “Peace be upon you.” But to a non-Muslim, a Muslim was to wish peace only upon “whoever follows right guidance,” that is, the Muslims. Khalid continued:

  Praise be to God, Who has scattered your servants, wrested your sovereignty away, and rendered your plotting weak. Whoever worships the way we worship, faces the direction we face in prayer, and eats meat slaughtered in our fashion, that person is a Muslim and obtains the benefits we enjoy and takes up the responsibilities we bear. Now then, when you receive this letter, send me hostages and place yourself under my protection. Otherwise, by Him other than Whom there is no god, I will most certainly send against you a people who love death just as you love life.31

  The Sassanian rulers soon realized these were not empty words. Khalid stormed through Persia, offering the Persians the same ultimatum: convert to Islam, pay the jizya, or face war. He defeated the Persians in numerous battles. At the fortress of Dumah, a force of Christian Arabs joined the locals in defense against the Muslims; Khalid defeated them as easily as he had everyone else, beheaded their commander, and bought his daughter, who was renowned for her beauty, as a sex slave.32

  In December 633, Khalid arrived at al-Firad, a Persian fortress on the Sassanians’ border with the other great power of the day, the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines, seeing the Muslim advances all over Iraq, decided to aid the Persians against Khalid, even though they had just fought a series of exhausting wars against each other. The ninth-century Muslim historian Tabari has the Persians and Byzantines exchanging intelligence about Khalid: “This is a man who is fighting on the basis of religion. He has intelligence and knowledge. By God, he will most definitely be victorious, whereas we will most certainly fail.”33

  It is doubtful that seventh-century Roman and Persian commanders were actually that defeatist, but they were certainly correct that Khalid was “fighting on the basis of religion.” Everywhere he had gone in Persia, he had called the people to accept Islam or pay the jizya; for Khalid, the invasion of Persia was an expedition to bring Islam to the Sassanid Empire, or to subjugate the Zoroastrians and Christians in Persia under the rule of the Muslims.

  The Persians and Byzantines had every reason to be concerned. Khalid told his men: “Press your pursuit of them. Do not grant them any respite.”34 The Muslims won a decisive victory; Tabari notes that “the cavalry commander would corner a group of them with the spears of his men; having collected them, they would kill them. On the day of al-Firad, one hundred thousand men were slain in the battle and the pursuit.”35

  After this, Khalid returned to Arabia and made the pilgrimage to Mecca, giving thanks to Allah for granting him so many great victories for Islam. He planned then to return to Persia and complete its conquest, first by attacking Qadissiyah, a Persian fort that lay between him and the imperial capital of Ctesiphon. As it turned out, however, he was needed elsewhere. The Muslim armies had entered Syria, a Byzantine province, but they were not facing as easy a time of it as Khalid had encountered in Persia. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius was assembling a massive force to meet them, and Abu Bakr wasn’t confident that any of the generals he had in Syria were up to the challenge. But he knew a man who was: “By Allah,” he exclaimed, “I shall destroy the Romans and the friends of Satan with Khalid Ibn Al Walid.”36 He ordered Khalid to put his plans for Persia on hold for the time being and go to Syria.

  Khalid did so and his men won battle after battle, reaching Damascus in August 634 and laying siege to it. But then his most important supporter, the caliph Abu Bakr, fell mortally ill. Tabari says it was the handiwork of those whom the Qur’an designates (at 5:82) to be the worst enemies of the Muslims: “The cause of his death was that the Jews fed him poison in a grain of rice; it is also said in porridge.”37

  “THE LITTLE LEFT-HANDED MAN” TAKES OVER

  On his deathbed, Abu Bakr appointed his most trusted lieutenant, Umar ibn al-Khattab, to succeed him as caliph. As far as Umar was concerned, his first job upon becoming caliph was to put his enemy in his place. Umar’s hatred for Khalid ibn al-Walid had not dimmed; even as Khalid was defeating Byzantine armies that were larger and better equipped in Syria, “the little left-handed man” finally had his chance: Umar sent word that he was relieving Khalid of command.38

  Khalid complied humbly, staying with the Muslim armies as a lesser commander; however, the great general had the last laugh later, when Abu Ubaydah, whom Umar had appointed commander of the Muslim armies, heeded Khalid’s advice regarding the placement of the Muslim armies against the Byzantines in the decisive battle of Yarmouk, and ultimately placed him in command of the Muslim forces at Yarmouk. Khalid, always behaving deferentially toward Abu Ubaydah, continued to win victory after victory over the infidels; he became a hero among the Muslims and was hailed as “the sword of Allah.” There was one person, however, whom he never entirely won over: Umar, now the caliph of the Muslims.

  TAKING SYRIA

  The Byzantines amassed a massive force to meet the Muslims at Yarmouk in Syria, once again far outnumbering the Muslim armies.39 Before the battle, one of the Muslims, Miqdad, stood before the Muslims and recited the eighth chapter of the Qur’an, “The Spoils of War,” also known as “The Chapter of Jihad,” in order to instill in them the fighting spirit.40 It was said that Muhammad had begun after the Battle of Badr to recite this chapter before battles, and as he remained the “excellent example” (33:21) for the Muslims, the practice continued.

  In this cha
pter, Allah reminds the Muslims to remember, “When your Lord inspired to the angels, ‘I am with you, so strengthen those who have believed. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.’” (8:12) It exhorts the Muslims to “fight them until there is no fitnah [disturbance, rebellion] and the religion, all of it, is for Allah.” (8:39) And it reminds them that Muhammad is to receive a fifth of the goods and women they capture from the enemy: “And know that anything you obtain of war booty—then indeed, for Allah is one fifth of it and for the Messenger and for near relatives and the orphans, the needy, and the traveler.” (8:41)

  Another Muslim commander, Abu Sufyan, went among the troops exclaiming: “God, God! You are the defenders of the Arabs and the supporters of Islam. They are the defenders of the Romans and the supporters of polytheism. O God, this is a day from among your days. O God, send down your help to your worshipers.”41

  Thus inspired, the Muslims rushed to engage the Byzantines in battle. In the latter camp, morale was not so high. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius, meanwhile, was worried. He told his lieutenants: “Did I not tell you, ‘Do not fight them’? You have no staying power with these people. Their religion is a new religion that renews their persistence, so that no one will stand up to them but he will be tested.”42

  Indeed. Khalid and his men won a decisive victory at Yarmouk, drastically weakening the Christian empire and paving the way for more Arab conquests.43 The Muslims then struck a further blow to the Christians by expelling the Christian community at Najran in Yemen from the Arabian Peninsula, in accord with what were recorded as Muhammad’s deathbed words: “If I live—if Allah wills—I will expel the Jews and the Christians from the Arabian Peninsula.”44

  The Muslims moved on to a swift conquest of Damascus; the native Christian population was forced to pay the jizya (tax), and Khalid assured them that they would be safe as long as the money kept flowing: “The Muslims and their Caliph will practice nothing but good to the people of Damascus while they keep paying the jizyah.”45

  Umar likewise emphasized that the Muslims must be sure to collect the jizya from the subjugated peoples, as it was nothing less than the Muslims’ source of livelihood: “I advise you to fulfill Allah’s dhimma [financial obligation made with the dhimmi] as it is the dhimma of your Prophet and the source of the livelihood of your dependents [that is, the taxes from the dhimmi.]”46

  TAKING PERSIA

  With Syria now almost entirely under the control of the invaders, the Muslims could turn their attention back to Persia. But many were reluctant, according to Tabari: “The Persian front was among the most disliked and difficult of the warfronts for them, because of the strength of the Persians’ sovereignty, their military force, their might, and their subjection of the nations.”47 Finally Umar himself made an appeal, basing it firmly upon Islam:

  The Hijaz is not a home for you except for foraging, its inhabitants do not survive in it except by that. Where are the impulsive migrants for the sake of God’s promise? Travel in the land that God has promised you in the Book to make you heirs to, for He has said, “That he may make it [Islam] triumph over all religion” [cf. Qur’an 9:33, 48:28, 61:9]. God is the one who grants victory to His religion, strengthens His helper, and commits to His people of the inheritances of the nations. Where are the righteous worshippers of God?48

  Many Muslims heeded the call, and as far as they could tell, Umar’s words proved true. The Muslims met a vastly superior Persian force at Buwaib on the Euphrates; Muslim sources recorded that the Persian army was devastated, losing one hundred thousand men to the Muslims’ one hundred.49 Soon after that, the armies approached each other again at another town on the Euphrates, Qadisiyya. Despite their earlier losses, the Persians still vastly outnumbered the Muslims and were vastly better equipped.

  As seven thousand Muslims encamped to face a Persian force of thirty thousand, the Persians were derisive. Seeing the thinness of the Arabs’ arrows, the Persians laughed, saying the invaders had come armed with spindles. Some of the Persians called out to the invading warriors: “You have no might or power or weapons. What has brought you here? Turn back!”50 The Arabs responded: “We shall not turn back. We are not the kind of people who turn back.”51

  The Persians invited the Muslims to send an emissary to explain why they had come. The Muslims sent a warrior named Al-Mughirah, who explained to Rustam, the Persian commander, and his men about Islam and added: “If you kill us, we shall enter Paradise; if we kill you, you shall enter the Fire, or hand over the poll tax.”52 The Persians snorted derisively and retreated to the battle lines.

  But the Persian emperor, Yazdegerd III, was intrigued. He summoned the Muslim envoys to his court and asked them what they wanted. When the rough jihadis entered, clad in rustic cloaks and sandals and carrying whips, the perfumed, splendidly clad Persian courtiers were as amazed as they were contemptuous.53

  Yazdegerd, however, was in no mood for mockery. He asked the Muslims point-blank: “Why did you come here? What induced you to attack us and covet our country?”

  A member of the Muslim delegation, Al-Nu’man ibn Muqarrin, answered by telling him about the prophet, whom he did not name, who “promised us the goodness of this world and of the next,” and who brought all the tribes of Arabia under his sway, “willingly or unwillingly.” The prophet, said Al-Nu’man, “ordered us to start with the nations adjacent to us and invite them to justice.” He added:

  We are therefore inviting you to embrace our religion. This is a religion which approves of all that is good and rejects all that is evil. If you refuse our invitation, you must pay the poll tax. This is a bad thing, but not as bad as the alternative; if you refuse, it will be war.54

  Yazdegerd was incensed. He responded: “But for the custom not to kill envoys, I would have killed you. I have nothing for you.”55 He told them that the Persians would “punish you severely as an example for others.”56

  But it was not to be. At Qadisiyya, the Persians were again decisively defeated. The Muslims’ control over Iraq was now virtually total, and the warriors of jihad continued moving against what remained of the Sassanid Empire, pursuing the shattered remnants of the Persian army into Persia itself.

  When the Muslims took the Persian imperial capital of Ctesiphon in 636, they entered the emperor’s White Palace, had the throne replaced with a pulpit, proclaimed that there was no god but Allah and Muhammad was his prophet, and said Friday prayers there. One of them quoted (or, given the lack of contemporary historical evidence of the existence by this time of the Muslim holy book, perhaps composed) verses of the Qur’an about the opulence they had conquered: “How much they left behind of gardens and springs and crops and noble sites, and comfort wherein they were amused. Thus. And We caused another people to inherit it. And the heaven and earth did not weep for them; nor were they reprieved.” (44:25–29).

  When the Arabs took Basra in Iraq, Umar instructed his lieutenant Utbah bin Ghazwan to offer the people choices essentially identical to those Khalid had previously offered the Persians: “Summon the people to God; those who respond to your call, accept it from them, but those who refuse must pay the poll tax out of humiliation and lowliness. If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency. Fear God with regard to what you have been entrusted.”57

  With Persia largely subdued, Umar declared proudly: “The Empire of the Magians has become extinct this day and from now on they will not possess a span of land to injure the Muslims in any way.”58 However, he warned the Muslims that their ability to hold the land, and to conquer more, depended entirely upon their adherence to the will of Allah and to the religion that the deity had declared “perfected” (Qur’an 5:3): “Muslims do keep in mind not to admit any change in your way of life; otherwise, Allah the Almighty will take the sovereign power from you and give it to others.”59 The ability to gain and retain political power was direct
ly tied to one’s obedience to Allah and Islam.

  TAKING JERUSALEM

  The modern-day Muslim historian Akbar Shah Najeebabadi portrays the Muslim conquerors of the seventh century as magnanimous, beneficent, and tolerant:

  Whenever the Muslim army halted for a few days, the populace of that territory rose to welcome the Muslims as providers of peace and prosperity. When the defeated nations watched with their naked eyes, the blessings of peace, morality, divine affection, justice, mercy, courage and the ambition of their victories, they put themselves in their service. It is an undeniable fact of history that humanity saved itself only through the marching steps of the Arab forces.60

  The inhabitants of Jerusalem in the year 636 would undoubtedly have had a different view.

  At that point, it looked as if Allah was pleased with the Muslims’ level of devotion and ready to grant them more victories; it was now the turn of Jerusalem. According to Tabari, Umar wrote its inhabitants a conciliatory letter:

  In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. This is the assurance of safety [aman] which the servant of God, Umar, the Commander of the Faithful, has granted to the people of Jerusalem. He has given them an assurance of safety for themselves, for their property, their churches, their crosses, the sick and the healthy of the city, and for all the rituals that belong to their religion. Their churches will not be inhabited [by Muslims] and will not be destroyed. Neither they, nor the land on which they stand, nor their cross, nor their property will be damaged. They will not be forcibly converted. No Jew will live with them in Jerusalem. The people of Jerusalem must pay the poll tax [jizya] like the people of the [other] cities, and they must expel the Byzantines and the robbers.61