Through Force or Faith? — Page 191
Chapter 3 — Holy Prophet and Wars 191 to preach to different tribes and countries including Abyssinia, Egypt, Iran and Byzantine Rome ( S ī rat Ibn Hish ā m ). In contrast, there is no need to consider the first part of the Bible, that is, the Old Testament, because there it is ordained to eliminate not just the followers of other religions, but even their livestock and property, as we have recorded earlier in this article. However, the study of Christianity in this context is not without interest. One predecessor of the Pope, the vicegerent of Jesus on Earth, Honourable Pope Innocent III, not only ini- tiated the Fourth crusade against Muslims, he also fought wars against Christians who opposed his viewpoint. The war against Albigenses is notorious for its barbarism. That Pope was of the view that coercion in faith is justified and if someone is made a Christian forcibly, even he …does receive the impress of Christianity and may be forced to observe the Christian Faith as one who expressed a conditional willingness though, absolutely speaking, he was unwilling… (For) the grace of Baptism had been received, and they had been anointed with the sacred oil, and had participated in the body of the Lord, they might properly be forced to hold to the faith which they had accepted perforce, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed, and lest they hold in contempt and consider vile the faith they had joined’. (Grayzel, Solomon, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century, Rev. Ed. , New York: Hermon, 1966, p. 103) One must note that this statement is not of an ordinary Christian