Murder in the Name of Allah — Page 14
Murder in the Name of Allah other. ' Smith asserted that it was not the generals but the Prophetsa himself who 'preached with a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other'. George Sale wrote: 'When the followers of the Prophet increased in number he claimed that God had allowed him to attack the unbelievers so that idolatry be destroyed and true religion be established. '. The Revd Dr C. G. Pfander, who was actively engaged in missionary work among Indian Muslims during the latter part of the nineteenth century, provoked great unrest by writing controversial tracts to expose, as he put it, 'The false Prophet of Islam'. In one such tract he said: 1. For 13 years Muhammad preached his new religion in conciliatory terms and with great patience. 2. Now (in Medina) he became Al-Nabiyyu bis-Saif, 'The swordwielding Prophet', and since then Islam's strongest argument has been the sword. 3. If we study the behaviour of Muhammad'ssa followers we notice that they thought it was not necessary for them to follow a religious and moral code. God demanded from them only one thing: that they should fight for. God with swords, arrows, daggers and sabres to continue to kill. ³. And after this introduction the Revd Dr Pfander concluded: 'You have to choose between Jesus, Word of God, and Hazrat Muhammad, son of. Abdullah; between one who devoted his life to acts of piety and one who dedicated his life to the sword. ” '4. Aloy Spranger, Henry Copey and many other critics of Islam followed the same line of attack on both Islam and the Prophets. Washington Irving went a step further, printed on the title page of one of his books is an imaginary painting of the Prophet with a sword in one hand and the. Quran in the other. ". If one compares all that has been quoted above with the opening quotation of Maulana Maududi's Al-Jihad fil Islam, one finds the. Prophet'ssa critics in agreement. Both the Maulana and the orientalists maintained that Islam had a violent nature. Yet, despite this belief, the. Maulana believed in Islam while they rejected it. Apart from the wording, there is no difference between paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of the quotation from Dr Pfander above and the quotation from Maulana Maududi above. But one shows the respect of a Muslim; the other, the sarcasm of a bitter critic. . The snide remarks of the orientalists about the Prophet of Islamsa are as unsurprising as they are hurtful. They are sometimes made out of ignorance, but mostly out of malice. The hostility towards Islam 14