Forcible Religious Conversion

A BBC story quoted a man called 'Sheikh Hassan Ghidan' (who is styled as a salafist scholar and preacher, who graduated from Cairo's influential Islamic university, al-Alzhar), as saying that he believes in changing society by teaching people at grass roots level, rather than through the violent jihad espoused by some other Salafists - but that he shares the same long term aims as them.

"The changes we seek are to apply the Islamic Sharia - the Islamic law to achieve social justice, and to establish an Islamic Caliphate, to liberate the occupied lands - lands occupied by non-Muslims, the lands which were originally Muslim."

He lists the following, as some of the lands that need to be re-taken 'Palestine, Iraq, Burma, Chechnya and Andalucia in Spain'.

This historical ignorance just makes me laugh, but doesn't surprise me .... the only land that can be said to be originally Muslim is the Saudi peninsular ... all the others were Christian or another religion, and were forcibly incorporated into an Arab Empire - there was only conversion by the sword after that - in fact its the only major religion that has gained its majority of followers by violent conquest, and its conversions almost entirely by violence (Sadly he Christians also did this in South America, but generally not elsewhere).

Islams Original Expansion and Expulsions

With the possible exception of the Sahel region of Africa and Malaya, Islam has almost never taken root via the intellectual winning of hearts and minds ever since. All the lands in this Salafist list, have either successfully repulsed an invasion, or thrown occupation out (Spain or Burma for example), and all have reasserted their native religions.  Others are an integral part of a non Muslim country such as Russia .... what's also interesting is that Iraq is now a Shia Muslim state now, and therefore to the Sunni crackpots, its also classed as non Muslim.

These Salafists are usually very violent men, with an agenda which our government should be addressing now with the Saudi's who continue to promote it ....... remember this is a major part of the Islam that the Saudi's export worldwide (including into the Balkans). One look at this map of the conquest years, shows that where the sword failed, Islam expansion stopped.

Islam is still only a force in those countries where Arab or Turkish armies suppressed the native religions .... maybe we should espouse a violent Christian creed, whose aim would be to 'liberate the occupied lands - lands occupied by non-Christians, the lands which were originally Christian' .... a list might include Bosnia, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt ... just a thought.