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Preaching of Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith

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This book was written by Sir Thomas Arnold who lived and worked as a professor of philosophy in Lahore, India (now Pakistan). He was widely traveled in the Muslim world. This book, now roughly 100 years old, is still relevant today, perhaps moreso now than ever.

He states his case that Islam was not spread by the sword, as is so stereotypically thought by many, but through preaching and daily commerce. While there has been military conquest by Islamic nations, the actual conversions to the Islamic faith were not done by the sword. This is a tough concept to grasp. Considering that Islam is considered an entire way of life, the military conquests are not outside of the realm of Islam.

The division between religion and politics leads to the schizophrenia we see today in many a Western nation's bumbling other countries, most recently America in Iraq. For the sake of analogy let us ask that if the citizens of Iraq were, for example, to convert to Christianity could we say that they were converted by the sword? Or did the conversions come once the military maneuvering was done? If a host of missionaries ride in on the coattails of the military, would history lead us to believe that conversions were done by the sword?

This analogy obviously falls apart because Christianity is not a faith that embraces politics under its name and America is not based upon a religious ideology but the question is worth considering. Did those who converted to Islam do so for fear of the sword? Or did victory come militarily/politically first (and wherever there are men there are politics) and then the faith spread?

Arnold makes his case that it was not the sword that led to the majority of conversions to Islam. It was the strength of the faith of the ordinary individuals who lived it. The book is not light reading and is very dense but it is interesting and it is definitely worth reading to get some balance on how the spread of Islam is viewed. He is not naively glowing in his approach but is very balanced in his report. Vital for those who really want to understand truth on their own terms.

Update: This book has been repackaged and is interestingly retitled 'The Spread of Islam in the World - A History of Peaceful Preaching' and is available through Astrolabe's website.

From an academic point of view, this book is undoubtedly outdated. Written in the late nineteenth century, there have certainly been advances in our knowledge concerning the areas this book covers (to take one example, the Bogomil identity of the Bosnian Church has been challenged). However this book is still valuable since few if any historians have attempted such a vast subject, covering the genesis of Muslim communities throughout the world- ranging from Siberia to Cape Town. Arnold's basic thesis that large scale conversions to Islam were not the result of force is still valid, borne out by modern scholars such as Hugh Kennedy and Richard Bulliet. His chapters on the Middle East, Christian Africa, Persia and Spain are the most coherent and thorough- given that the conversion of these areas was a single historical process. He mainly attributes the success of Islam to the decadence and the corruption of the local Orthodox churches. Arnold notes the scarcity of accounts of recorded Muslim attempts to convert people, which is a disappointing gap. Despite sporadic persecutions that occurred, Arnold martials enough contemporary accounts to demonstrate that conversion was generally a matter of choice, even if there were non-spiritual motives involved.

His chapters on Africa, India, Central Asia, and China are also interesting, even if necessarily less thorough (every state of India or Africa has its own Muslim story). The chapter on the Malay archipelago (Indonesia), is not as rich in detail- for whatever reason, Arnold provides us with a detailed account of the politics that led to the Muslim state of Demak taking over the Hindu empire of Majapahit, but excludes details of the missionary work of the famous 9 walis, which is far more relevant to Arnold's subject matter. His chapter on Central Asia begins with the Mongols (skipping the earlier Turks as their conversion is probably far more shrouded) and then jumps rather abruptly to the conversions of the indigenous peoples of the Volga in the 19th century (although most of these people are today Russian Orthodox).

Besides the history, the most interesting parts of Arnold's book are the aspects of social history regarding the spread of Islam- including the autobiographical account of a Hindu Brahmin who converted to Islam, memoirs of a Spanish Muslim refugee from Granada bemoaning the fate of the tolerant Spanish Muslim kingdom, two letters from Central Asian potentates inviting the emperor of China to embrace Islam, reflections of African slaves who embraced Islam while in captivity, the accounts of an Egyptian Jew transfixed at the sight of a Friday prayer, and the accounts of European prisoners in the Ottoman world. It is accounts such as this which fill in the bare bones of Muslim history and provide a vivid glance at what the Muslim faith has meant to its followers, particularly converts, over the centuries.

It helps to read this in conjunction with wikipedia, as Arnold often uses older names, such as Galla (now Oromi), Cheremiss (now Votiak), etc.