Islamic tradition holds that the verses relating to wars and fighting were overtaken by those revealed during the peace that followed between Muslims and non-Muslims. Hence the later exhortations to avoid war altogether, limit warfare, honor treaties and, if attacked, to respond only proportionately, to protect civilian non-combatants and not mutilate the dead:

Fight them [only] until there is no persecution (8:39).

If your enemy inclines toward peace, then you, too, should seek peace and put your trust in God (8:61).

Warfare is an awesome evil (2:217).

The overall Qur’anic message is clear, said Shaltut: “There are only three reasons for fighting: repelling aggression, protecting Islam and defending religious freedom.”4

Can Muslims undertake a jihad to spread Islam by killing infidels? Arguments on this flow from this Qur’anic line:

When the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them and confine them, and prepare to ambush them (9:5).

However, this, too, is qualified by what follows:

But if they repent and establish worship and pay the zakat [charity], then let them go their way, for God is forgiving and kind (9:5).

Such verses were “directed at a certain people, who had broken their pledges and hindered and assailed the propagation of Islam,” Shaltut wrote. “The verses do not say that the quality of being an unbeliever constitutes sufficient reason for fighting.”5

The Qur’an lays down two clear guidelines for Muslim relations with non-Muslims — one of brotherhood with Christians and Jews, and the other of religious freedom and pluralism for all humanity:

Dispute not with the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] save in the most courteous manner, and say: “We believe in what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you; Our God and your God is one, and to Him we surrender” (29:46).

If God had willed, He would have made you one nation (5:48).

Had thy Lord willed, He would have made mankind one nation; but they continue in their differences (11.118).

“There is not a single trace of any idea of conversion by force,” said Shaltut. “The Qur’an states clearly and distinctly that faith produced by force is without value and that he who yields to force and changes his faith loses his honor.”

This takes us to the popular belief that Islam was spread by the sword. Islam did win converts as the Muslim armies conquered vast swaths of land in the first hundred years after the Prophet’s death. But what is forgotten or ignored is that a majority of people ruled by Muslims remained non-Muslims. Furthermore, Islam expanded into China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa primarily through traders and the non-violent Sufi saints. What is also forgotten is that it was Christians, not Muslims, who expelled the Jews from Spain in the fifteenth century, and later the Muslims: “Every Muslim was driven from Spain, put to the sword or forced to convert whereas the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church remains in Istanbul [Turkey] to this day.”6