Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (1875-1936) was an Englishman, an orientalist and an Anglican-turned-Muslim. His translation of the meaning of the Qur'an was first published in 1930 and he was supported in this effort by His Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad (the ruler of Deccan in the South of India). Pickthall traveled extensively to several Muslim countries including Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Egypt, Arabia and India. He spent several years in India and interacted with indigenous Muslims.

The 1920s was a period of great intellectual and political activity among the Muslims, particularly in India and Turkey. It is an interesting coincidence that the two most popular translations of the meaning of the Holy Qur'an into English were published from India or with the support and encouragement of Muslims of India. Pickthall's translation (1930) was followed by Abdullah Yusuf Ali's translation and commentary, which was published in parts over a period of time ending in 1934. Yusuf Ali was a native of India who later lived in England and Pakistan. As with Yusuf Ali's translation, Pickthall's translation, since its first publication, has gone through many reprints by several publishers in Pakistan, India, U.K. and U.S.A.

Apart from Pickthall, several other Muslims of international fame visited India in the 1920s. Muhammad Asad (1900-1992), former Leopold Weiss of Austria, exchanged views with great Muslim poet and philosopher (Sir) Muhammad Iqbal. Asad served as Pakistan's minister plenipotentiary to the U.N. He wrote many books including Islam at the Crossroads, Road to Mecca and his translation and explanation of the Qur'an entitled The Message of the Qur'an, all of which are popular especially in the West.

In 1927 Pickthall gave eight lectures on several aspects of Islamic civilization at the invitation of the Committee of 'Madras Lectures on Islam' in Madras, India, where he also spoke on 'The Life of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)' in 1925. Parts of Pickthall's lectures were made available in India at various times. Sh. Muhammad Ashraf Publishers (Lahore), from a manuscript provided by M.I. Jamal Moinuddin, published all of his lectures under the title The Cultural Side of Islam in 1961. Since then the book has gone through several reprints.

An abridged version of his fifth lecture on 'Tolerance in Islam' is presented below. In his long lecture, Pickthall frequently uses quotations from the Holy Qur'an to emphasise his points as well as to support his analyses and conclusions. All of his eight lectures reflect his vast knowledge of Islamic history, of the Western religious, political and intellectual history through the ages, and the reasons for their rise and fall. The lectures are very enlightening, analytically useful and of great value even today. Curious readers are recommended to go through the Cultural Side of Islam, published by Sh. M. Ashraf, Lahore.

An Abridged Version of Pickthall's Lecture

In the eyes of history, religious toleration is the highest evidence of culture in a group of people. It was not until the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they became more tolerant and, on the contrary, it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that they declined in tolerance and other marks of the highest culture. Tolerance had existed here and there in the world, among enlightened individuals; but those individuals had always been against the prevalent religion. Tolerance was regarded as un-religious, if not irreligious. Before the coming of Islam, tolerance had never been preached as an essential part of religion.

One of the commonest charges brought against Islam historically, and as a religion, by many Western writers is that it is intolerant. This is turning the tables with a vengeance when one remembers various facts: that not a Muslim is left alive in Spain or Sicily or Apulia; that not a Muslim was left alive and not a mosque left standing in Greece after the great rebellion in l821; how the Muslims of the Balkan Peninsula, once the majority, have been systematically reduced with the approval of the whole of Europe; how the Christians under Muslim rule have in recent times been urged on to rebel and massacre the Muslims, and how reprisals by the latter have been condemned as quite uncalled for.

In Spain under the Umayyads and in Baghdad under the Abbasid Khalifas, Christians and Jews, equally with Muslims, were admitted to schools and universities - not only that, they were boarded and lodged in hostels at the cost of the state. When the Moors were driven out of Spain, the Christian conquerors held a terrific persecution of the Jews. Those who were fortunate enough to escape fled, some of them to Morocco and many hundreds to the Turkish Empire, where their descendants still live and still speak among themselves an antiquated form of Spanish. The Muslim empire was a refuge for all those who fled from persecution by the Inquisition.

Western Christians, till the arrival of the Encyclopaedists in the eighteenth century, did not know and did not care to know, what the Muslims believed, nor did they seek to know the views of Eastern Christians with regard to them. The Christian Church was already split in two, and in the end, it came to such a situation that the Eastern Christians, as Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) in his The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire shows, preferred Muslim rule, which allowed them to practice their own form of religion and adhere to their dogmas, to the rule of fellow Christians who would have made them Roman Catholics or wiped them out.

Many Western Christians called the Muslims pagans and idolaters. There are plenty of books in which Muslims are described as worshiping an idol called Mahomet or Mahound (distorted and derogatory names of Prophet Muhammad). In the accounts of the conquest of Granada there are even descriptions of the monstrous idols which they were alleged to worship. But Muslims knew what Christianity was and in what respects it differed from Islam. If Europe had known as much of Islam as Muslims knew of Christendom, in those days, those mad, adventurous, occasionally chivalrous and heroic, but utterly fanatical outbreak known as the Crusades could not have taken place, for they were based on a complete misapprehension. I quote a learned French author:
Every poet in Christendom considered a Mohammedan to be an infidel, and an idolater, and his gods to be three; mentioned in order, they were: Mahomet or Mahound or Mohammad, Opolane and the third Termogond. It was said that when in Spain the Christians overpowered the Mohammedans and drove them as far as the gates of the city of Saragossa, the Mohammedans went back and broke their idols.
A Christian poet of the period says that Opolane the 'god' of the Mohammedans, which was kept there in a den was awfully belaboured and abused by the Mohammedans. They, binding its hand and foot, crucified it on a pillar, trampled it under their feet and broke it into pieces by beating it with sticks; they threw their second god Mahound in a pit and caused it to be torn into pieces by pigs and dogs; and never were gods so ignominiously treated; but afterwards the Mohammedans repented of their sins, and once more reinstated their gods for the accustomed worship. When the Emperor Charles entered the city of Saragossa he had every mosque in the city searched and had 'Muhammad' and all their Gods broken with iron hammers.

That was the kind of 'history' on which the populace in Western Europe used to be fed. Those were the ideas, which inspired the rank and file of the crusaders in their attacks on the most civilised peoples of those days. Christendom regarded the outside world as eternally damned. There were good and tender-hearted men in Christendom who thought it sad that any people should be damned eternally, and wished to save them by the only way they knew - conversion to the Christian faith.

For the Muslims, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are but three forms of one religion, which, in its original purity, was the religion of Abraham: Al-Islam, that perfect Self-Surrender to the Will of God, which is the basis of theocracy. The Jews, in their religion, after Moses, limited God's mercy to their chosen nation and thought of His kingdom as the dominion of their race. Even Christ himself, as several of his sayings show, declared that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel and seemed to regard his mission as to the Hebrews only; and it was only after a special vision vouchsafed to St. Peter that his followers considered themselves authorized to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. The Christians limited God's mercy to those who believed certain dogmas. Any one who failed to hold those dogmas was an outcast or a miscreant subject to be persecuted for their soul's good. The real nature of the Kingdom of God is manifest only in Islam.

The two verses (2:255-256) of the Qur'an are complementary; in the first one there is a realisation of the majesty and dominion of Allah (SWT), whereas the second one rules out any compulsion in religion. People choose their path - allegiance or opposition - and it is sufficient punishment for those who oppose that they draw further and further away from the light of truth.
What Muslims generally fail to understand is that this law applies to their own community just as much as to the folk outside, as the laws of Allah are universal. Intolerance of Muslims for other people's opinions and beliefs would mean that they themselves have, at the moment, forgotten the vision of the majesty and mercy of Allah, which the Qur'an presents to them.

In the Qur'an I find two meanings of the word 'Kafir' (disbeliever). A Kafir, in the first place, is not a follower of any religion. S/he is an opponent of Allah's benevolent will and purpose for mankind. So s/he is a disbeliever in the truth of all religions, the disbeliever in all Scriptures as of divine revelation, the disbeliever to the point of active opposition in all the Prophets (pbut) whom the Muslims are bidden to regard, without distinction, as messengers of Allah.

The Qur'an repeatedly claims to be the confirmation of the truth of all religions. The former Scriptures had become obscure; the former prophets appeared mythical. So extravagant were the legends which were told concerning them that people doubted whether there was any truth in the old Scriptures, whether such people as the prophets had ever really existed. Here - says the Qur'an - is a Scripture whereof there is no doubt; here is a Prophet actually living among you and preaching to you. If it were not for this book and this Prophet, men might be excused for saying that Allah's guidance to humanity was all a fable. This book and this Prophet, therefore, confirm the truth of all that was revealed before them, and those who disbelieve in them to the point of opposing the existence of a prophet and a revelation are really opposed to the idea of Allah's guidance - which is the truth of all revealed religions. The Kuffar (disbelievers), in the terms of the Qur'an, are the conscious evildoers of any race of creed or community.

I have made a long digression but it seemed to me necessary, for I find much confusion of ideas even among Muslims on this subject, owing to defective study of the Qur'an and Prophet's life. Many Muslims seem to forget that our Prophet had allies among the idolaters even after Islam had triumphed in Arabia, and that he 'fulfilled his treaty with them perfectly until the term thereof.' The righteous conduct of the Muslims, not the sword, must be held responsible for the conversion of those idolaters, since they embraced Islam before the expiration of their treaty.

Idolaters of Arabia had no real beliefs to oppose the teachings of Islam except their superstitions and mythologies. They invoked their local deities for help in war and put their faith only in brute force, in which they were, to begin with, enormously superior to the Muslims. When the Muslims nevertheless won, they were dismayed; and all their arguments based on the superior power of their deities were forever silenced. Their conversion followed naturally. It was only a question of time with the most obstinate ones of them.

It was otherwise with the people who had a respectable religion of their own. The People of Scripture - as the Qur'an calls them - the Jews, the Christians and the Zoroastrians were those with whom the Muslims came at once in contact. To these our Prophet's attitude was all of kindness. The Charter, which he granted to the Christian monks of Sinai, is extant. If you read it you will see that it breathes not only goodwill but also actual love. He gave to the Jews of Medina, so long as they were faithful to him and did not betray treaties, precisely the same treatment as to the Muslims. He was never aggressive against any person or group of people; he never penalised anyone, or made war on any people, on the ground of belief but only on the ground of conduct.

The story of his reception of Christian and Zoroastrian visitors is on record. There is no trace of religious intolerance at all in his treatment of people of other faith denominations. And it should be remembered - Muslims are rather apt to forget it, and it is of great importance to our outlook - that our Prophet did not ask the people of the Scripture to become his followers. He asked them only to accept the Kingdom of Allah, to abolish priesthood and restore their own religions to their original purity. The question, which, in effect, he put to everyone, was this: 'Are you for the Kingdom of God which includes all of us, or are you for your own community against the rest of humanity?' One is obviously the way of peace and human progress; and the other is a way of strife, oppression and calamity. But the rulers of the world, to whom he sent his message, most of them treated it as a message of either an insolent upstart or of a mad fanatic. His envoys were insulted cruelly, and even slain. One cannot help wondering what reception that same embassy would meet with from the rulers of today, when all the thinking portions of humankind accept Prophet's premises, have thrown off the trammels of priest-craft, and harbour some idea of human brotherhood.

But though the Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians refused his message, and their rulers heaped most cruel insults on his envoys, our Prophet never lost his benevolent attitudes towards them as religious communities; as witness, the Charter to the monks of Sinai has already been mentioned. And though the Muslims of later days have fallen far short of the Holy Prophet's tolerance, and have sometimes shown arrogance towards people of other faiths, they have always given special treatment to the Jews and Christians. Indeed the Laws for their special treatment form part of the Shari'ah.

In Egypt the Copts were on terms of closest friendship with the Muslims in the first centuries of the Muslim conquest, as they are on good terms with the Muslims at the present day. In Syria the various Christian communities lived on terms of closest friendship with the Muslims in the first centuries of the Muslim conquest, and they are on terms of closest friendship with the Muslims at the present day, openly preferring Muslim domination to a foreign yoke.

There were always flourishing Jewish communities in the Muslim realm, notably in Spain, North Africa, Syria, Iraq and later on in Turkey. Jews fled from Christian persecution to Muslim countries for refuge. In some cases, whole communities of them voluntarily embraced Islam following a revered rabbi whom they regarded as the promised Messiah; but many more remained as Jews, and they were never persecuted as in Christendom. The Turkish Jews are one with the Turkish Muslims today. And it is noteworthy that the Arabic-speaking Jews of Palestine - the old immigrants from Spain and Poland - are one with the Muslims and Christians in opposition to the transformation of Palestine into a national home for the Jews.

To turn to the Christians, the story of the triumphal entry of Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab into Jerusalem has been often told; but I shall tell it once again, for it illustrates the proper Muslim attitude towards the People of the Scripture. The Christian officials urged him to spread his carpet in the Church (of the Holy Sepulchre) itself, but he refused saying that some of the ignorant Muslims after him might claim the Church and convert it into a mosque if he prayed there. He had his carpet carried to the top of the steps outside the church, to the spot where the Mosque of Umar now stands - the real Mosque of Umar. (The splendid Qubbet-us-Sakhrah, which tourists call the Mosque of Umar, is not a Mosque at all, but the temple of Jerusalem - a shrine within the precincts of the Masjid-al-Aqsa, which is the second of the Holy Places of Islam.) From that day onwards, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has always been a Christian place of worship. The only things the Muslims did in the way of interference with the Christian's liberty of conscience in respect of it was to see that every sect of Christians had access to it, and that it was not monopolised by one sect to the exclusion of others. The same is true of the Church of the Nativity of Bethlehem, and of other buildings of special sanctity.

Under the Khulafa-ur-Rashidin (the rightly guided caliphs) and the Umayyads, the true Islamic attitude was maintained, and it continued to a much later period under the Umayyad rule in Spain. In those days it was not an unusual practice for Muslims and Christians to use the same places of worship. I could point to a dozen buildings in Syria which tradition says were thus conjointly used; and I have seen at Lud (Lydda), in the plain of Sharon, a Church of St. George and a mosque under the same roof with only a partition wall in between. The partition wall did not exist in early days. The words of Caliph Umar proved true in other cases; not only half of the church at Lydda, but the whole church in other places was claimed by ignorant Muslims of a later day on the mere ground that the early Muslims had prayed there. But there was absolute liberty of conscience for the Christians; they kept their most important Churches and built new ones; though by a later edict their church bells were taken from them because their din annoyed the Muslims, it was said; only the big bell of the Holy Sepulchre remaining. They used to call to prayer by beating a naqus, a wooden gong, the same instrument that Prophet Noah (pbuh) is said to have used to summon the chosen few into his ark.

It was not the Christians of Syria who desired the Crusades, nor did the Crusades care a jot for them, or their sentiments; the Crusaders rather regarded them as heretics and interlopers. The latter word sounds strange in this connection, but there is a reason for its use.

The great Abbasid Caliph Harun ar-Rashid had once sent (God knows why), among other presents, the keys of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to Charlemagne, the Frankish Emperor. Historically, it was a wrong to the Christians of Syria, as they did not belong to the Western Church, and as they asked for no protection other than the Muslim government. Politically, it was a mistake and proved the source of endless trouble to the Muslim Empire. The keys sent, it is true, were only duplicate keys. The Church was in daily use. It was not locked up till Charlemagne chose to lock it. The present of the keys was intended only as a compliment, as one would say: 'You and your people can have free access to the Church which is the centre of your faith, your goal of pilgrimage, whenever you may come to visit it.' But the Frankish Christians took the present in literal sense and regarded it as the title to a freehold, and looked on the Christians of the country as mere interlopers, as I said before, as well as heretics.

That compliment from king to king was the foundation of all the extravagant claims of France in later centuries. Indirectly it was the foundation of Russia's even more extortionate claims, for Russia claimed to protect the Eastern Church against the encroachment of Roman Catholics; and it was the cause of many ill feelings, which had never existed between the Muslims and their Christians Dhimmis.

When the Crusaders took Jerusalem they indiscriminately massacred the Eastern Christians together with the Muslims. While they ruled in Palestine the Eastern Christians, who did not accompany the retreating Muslim army, were deprived of all the privileges they used to enjoy under Muslim regime and were treated as social outcasts. Many of them became Roman Catholics in order to secure a higher status; but after the re-conquest, when the emigrants returned, the followers of the Eastern Church were found again to be in large majority over those who owed obedience to the Pope of Rome. The old order was re-established and all the Dhimmis once again enjoyed their privileges in accordance with the Sacred Law (of Islam).

But the effect of those fanatical inroads had embittered Muslim sentiments and stung them with an intellectual contempt for the Christians generally, which was bad for both Muslims and Christians. The attendant arrogance hardened into custom. When Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt occupied Syria in the third decade of the nineteenth century, a deputation of the Muslims of Damascus waited on him with a complaint that under his rule the Christians were beginning to ride on horseback. Ibrahim Pasha pretended to be greatly shocked at the news, and asked for leave to think for a whole night on so disturbing an announcement. Next morning, he informed the deputation that since it was, of course, a shame for Christians to ride as high as Muslims, he gave permission to all Muslims thenceforth to ride on camels. That was probably the first time when the Muslims of Damascus had ever been brought face to face with the absurdity of their pretensions.

By the beginning of the Eighteenth century AD, the Christians had, by custom, been made subject to certain social disabilities, but these were never, at the worst, so cruel or so galling as those to which the Roman Catholic nobility of France at the same period subjected their own Roman Catholic peasantry, or as those which Protestants imposed on Roman Catholics in Ireland; and they weighed only on the wealthy portion of the community. The poor Muslims and poor Christians were on equality, and were still good friends and neighbours.

The Muslims never interfered with the religion of the subject Christians (such as, The Treaty of Orihuela, Spain, 713), nor did they interfere in the internal affairs of their communities; there was never anything like the Inquisition or the fires of Smithfield. Thus a number of small Christian sects, called by the larger sects heretical, which would inevitably have been exterminated if left to the tender mercies of the larger sects whose power prevailed in Christendom, were protected and preserved until today by the power of Islam.

Innumerable monasteries, with a wealth of treasure of which the worth has been calculated not less than a hundred million sterling pounds, enjoyed the benefit of the Prophet Muhammad's Charter to the monks of Sinai and were religiously respected by Muslims. Various sects of Christians were represented in the Council of the Empire by their patriarchs, in the provincial and district council by their bishops, in the village council by their priests, whose word was always taken without question on things, which were the sole concern of their community. The tolerance within the body of Islam was, and is, something without parallel in history; class, race and color ceasing altogether to be barriers.

With regard to the respect for monasteries, I have a curious instance of my own remembrance. In the year 1905 the Arabic congregation of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or Church of the Resurrection as it is locally called, rebelled against the tyranny of the Monks of the adjoining convent of St. George. The convent was extremely rich. A large part of its revenues was derived from lands, which had been made over to it by the ancestors of the Arab congregation for security at a time when property was insecure. The income was to be paid to the depositors and their descendants after deducting something for the convent. But no income had been paid to anybody by the Monks for more than a century, and the congregation now demanded that at least a part of that ill-gotten wealth should be spent on education of the community. The Patriarch sided with the congregation, but was captured by the Monks, who kept him prisoner. The congregation tried to storm the convent, and the amiable monk poured vitriol down upon the faces of the congregation. The congregation appealed to the Turkish government, which secured the release of the Patriarch and some concessions for the congregation, but could not make the monks disgorge any part of their wealth because of the immunities secured to Monasteries by the Sacred Law (of Islam).

Here is another incident from my memory. A sub-prior of the Monastery of St. George purloined a handful from the enormous treasure of the Holy Sepulchre - a handful worth some forty thousand pounds - and tried to get away with it to Europe. He was caught at Jaffa by the Turkish customs officers and brought back to Jerusalem. The poor man fell on his face before the Mutasarrif and implored him with tears to have him tried by Turkish Law. The answer was: 'We have no jurisdiction over monasteries,' and the poor grovelling wretch was handed over to the tender mercies of his fellow monks.

But the very evidence of their toleration, the concessions given to the subject people of another faith, were used against them in the end by their political opponents, just as the concessions granted in their day of strength to foreigners came to be used against them in their day of weakness. Three hundred years ago, the Franciscan friars were the only Western European missionaries to be found in the Muslim Empire. There was a terrible epidemic of plague, and those Franciscans worked devotedly, tending the sick and helping to bury the dead of all communities. In gratitude for this great service, the Turkish government decreed that all property of the Franciscans should be free of customs duty forever. In the Firman (Edict) the actual words used were 'Frankish missionaries' and at later time, when there were hundreds of missionaries from the West, most of them of other sects than the Roman Catholic, claimed that privilege, they were allowed it by the Turkish government because the terms of the original Firman included them. Not only that, they claimed that concession as a right, as if it had been won for them by force of arms or international treaty instead of being, as it was, a free gift of the Sultan; and called upon their consuls and ambassadors to support them strongly if it was at all infringed.

The Christians were allowed to keep their own languages and customs, to start their own schools and to be visited by missionaries of their own faith from Christendom. In countries where nationality and language were the same such as in Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia, there was no clash of ideals. But in Turkey, where the Christians spoke quite different languages from the Muslims, the ideals were also different. So long as the nationalism was un-aggressive, all went well; and it remained un-aggressive. So long as the Muslim Empire remained better governed, more enlightened and more prosperous than Christian countries, the subject Christians in Muslim lands were content with their position; and that may be said to have been the case, in all human essentials, up to the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Then for a period of about eighty years the Turkish Empire was badly governed; and the Christians suffered not from Islamic Institutions but from the decay of Islamic Institutions. Still it took for Russia more than a century of ceaseless secret propaganda work to stir up spirit of aggressive nationalism in the subject Christians, and then only by appealing to their religious fanaticism.

After the eighty years of bad government, an era of conscious reform came, when the Muslim government turned its attention to the improvement of the status of all the peoples under it. But then it was too late to win back the Serbs, the Greeks, the Bulgars and the Romans. The poison of the Russian religious and political propaganda had done its work. The prestige of Russian victories over the Turks had excited, in the worst elements among the Christians of the Greek Church, the hope of an early opportunity to slaughter and despoil the Muslims, strengthening the desire to do so which had been instilled in them by Russian secret envoys, priests and monks.

I do not wish to dwell upon this period of history, though it is to me the best known of all, for it is too recent and might rouse too strong a feeling in my audience. I will only remind you that in the Greek War of Independence (1821-32), three hundred thousand Muslims - men and women and children - the whole Muslim population of the Morea without exception, as well as many thousands in the northern parts of Greece were wiped out in circumstances of the most atrocious cruelty. In European histories we seldom find the slightest mention of that massacre, though we hear much of the reprisals which the Turks took afterwards. Before every massacre of Christians by Muslims of which you read, there was a more wholesale massacre or attempted massacre of Muslims by Christians. Those Christians were old friends and neighbours of the Muslims - the Armenians were the favoured of the Turks till fifty years ago - and that most of them were really happy under Turkish rule, as has been shown again and again by their tendency to return to it even after so called liberation.

It was the Christians outside the Muslim Empire who systematically and continually fed their religious fanaticism: it was their priests who told them that to slaughter Muslims was a meritorious act. I doubt if anything so wicked can be found in history as the plot for the destruction of Turkey. When I say 'wicked,' I mean inimical to human progress and therefore against Allah's guidance and His purpose for humanity. For it has made religious tolerance appear a weakness in the eyes of all the worldlings, because the multitudes of Christians who lived peacefully in Turkey are made to seem the cause of Turkey's martyrdom and downfall; while on the other hand the method of persecution and extermination which has always prevailed in Christendom is made to seem comparatively strong and wise. Thus religious tolerance is made to seem a fault, politically. But it is not really so. The victims of injustice are always less to be pitied in reality than the perpetrators of injustice.

The degradation and decline of Spain dates from the expulsion of the Moriscos. San Fernando was really wiser and more patriotic in his tolerance to conquered Seville, Murcia and Toledo than was the later king who, under the guise of Holy warfare, captured Grenada and let the Inquisition work its will upon the Muslims and the Jews. And the modern Balkan States and Greece are born under a curse. It may even prove that the degradation and decline of European civilization will be dated from the day when so-called civilized statesmen agreed to the inhuman policy of Czarist Russia and gave their sanction to the crude fanaticism of the Russian Church.

Despite all injustices and oppressions perpetrated on Muslims, let no Muslim, when looking on the ruin of the Muslim realm by the same peoples whom the Muslims had tolerated and protected through the centuries when Western Europe thought it a religious duty to exterminate or forcibly convert all peoples of another faith, imagine that toleration is a weakness in Islam. It is the greatest strength of Islam because it is the attitude of truth. Allah (SWT) is not the God of the Jews or the Christians or the Muslims only, any more than the sun shines or the rain falls for Jews or Christians or Muslims only.