FROM ARABIA TO THE GATES OF EUROPE: 1,400 YEARS OF ISLAMIC CONQUEST, POWER, AND THE BATTLE OVER WHOSE LAWS PREVAIL
History does not predict America’s future, but it can warn us about the dangers of mixing religious authority with government power.
Islam arose in seventh-century Arabia. Within approximately 100 years of Muhammad’s death in 632 CE, Muslim armies had conquered enormous territories across the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and Europe.
Here is the historical chronology:
630: Mecca falls under Muhammad’s control.
633–638: Muslim armies conquer Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and much of Iraq.
636–651: Persia’s Sasanian Empire is defeated.
639–642: Egypt is conquered.
647–709: Muslim armies expand across North Africa.
711–718: Muslim forces conquer most of Spain and Portugal.
711–715: Muslim armies invade Sindh, in modern Pakistan.
720s–732: Muslim forces advance into southern France, with a major defeat near Tours in 732.
1000–1027: Mahmud of Ghazni conducts repeated military raids into northern India.
1192–1206: Muslim military victories establish the foundations of the Delhi Sultanate.
1354–1500: Ottoman armies conquer large portions of southeastern Europe.
1453: Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Empire.
1526: The Mughal Empire is founded following military conquest in India. Ottoman armies also defeat Hungary at Mohács.
1683: Ottoman forces attempt to capture Vienna but are defeated.
NOW, HOW DID THEY ACCOMPLISH THIS?
In many of these examples, the answer is straightforward: military invasion, conquest, establishment of political authority, and the subsequent expansion of Islamic institutions and legal systems.
But the historical record also requires an important distinction. Islam spread into places such as Indonesia and much of sub-Saharan Africa largely through trade, missionary activity, and the conversion of local rulers rather than foreign military conquest.
Under historical Muslim governments, Christians, Jews, and other communities frequently lived under unequal legal arrangements, special taxation, or restrictions. Yet conversion was not universally compulsory, and local legal systems did not disappear everywhere overnight.
My concern is the relationship between religious authority and civil government. History demonstrates what can happen when religious rulers acquire the power to subordinate other communities to their own religious laws.
The same concern should apply today to any religious or ideological movement seeking to replace constitutional government with religious rule.
Freedom of religion deserves protection. Freedom from religious coercion deserves equal protection.
A nation’s civil laws must remain supreme over the religious demands of any particular community.