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

Is jihad the responsibility of the state or an individual? Most Muslim scholars have said that only the state can initiate holy war and that, too, only with the consent of the religious authority in the land. But people like bin Laden believe that when Muslim states fail to fight off foreign/non-Muslim aggression against Muslims — such as in Chechnya, Iraq or Palestine — then it is the duty of every Muslim to take up arms against the enemy. This view is shared by some but not by an overwhelming majority of Muslim scholars or ordinary Muslims. If it were, there would have been a mass movement to join bin Laden’s various jihads, rather than the few thousand who follow him.