titan said:
canadiaggie,
Thanks for attempting this. My question is basically just one overall, but needs a few lines to describe. The issue not of terrorism, but coercion in proselytizing - conversion.
Is there an Islamic concept that allows for maturation, development over time, to reject use of coercion, as has generally happened with most other faiths today? Agree that the sword verses are not the point. The point is the continued literalization of them in the 21st C. Other religions had literal periods too, but further in the past, and if behaving the same, would pose the same response need.
You say you are the opposite of the spectrum. Assuning not Shi'ia -- Which Sunni sects (or others) constitute the `rational non-coercion' views? Acceptance of non-coercion seems more key than any terrorism -- for it is coercion, for example, that leads to intimidating and killing women on individual level; even if there is no collective `terrorist' impulse.
Crucial to this: what sect is the El-Sissi form in Egypt, is there a movement underway in the spirit of his December 28, 2014 speech. Related, also, the kind of Islam we generally saw in modern Turkey? This appeared to be just such a blend, preserving many traditions yet rejecting intimidation until recently when Salafist influence gained.
I hope the question has made sense, this is not something the news or web sites even ask outside the simplifications.. Addressing it could be helpful.
Since I'm Shi'a, I'll try to frame my answer in a way that includes a general approach:
The original concept of forced conversion is untrue. Some may point to the Ridda wars, but keep in mind that the Arab society of the time was exceptionally tribal. Those wars were less about Abu Bakr converting people to Islam than bringing the breakaway tribes back into his rule. Not everyone allied in Muhammad's original coalition was Muslim, and certainly Abu Bakr only wanted what Muhammad had in the first place - the bay'ah, or the sworn allegiance, of these other tribes. Many of the tribes thought their Bay'ah expired when Muhammad died, or refused to follow Abu Bakr because they preferred Muhammad's cousin, Ali, as the rightful leader. The ones who gave their bay'ah to Ali eventually formed the nucleus of the Shi'a.
The Umayyads did not care, and certainly did not attempt to convert Christians or Jews into Muslims, for one reason in particular: the jizya tax. The Umayyads (Sunni) saw opportunities, because on top of the general tax paid by everyone, the Muslims had their Zakat tax and the non-Muslims had the Jizya tax. Now where the Zakat tax was collected and then disbursed as kind of a general welfare fund, partially by the government but mostly by local clergy and mosques, the Jizya tax went straight to the Caliph. Because Muslims, like all other human beings, are greedy *******s, the Caliphs liked this extra source of state income. They could justify it because they levied it on religious minorities, and they could always say "well, look, the Muslim citizens have to pay Zakat, so you should pay some religious tax too". The zakat tax was less, however, and the stipulation that Muslim citizens may be called into the Caliph's army was rarely used, because the Caliphs began to rely on Turkish mercenaries, so the financial incentives for conversion to Islam were also high. There was an instance where the Abbasid (Sunni with hard Shi'a leanings) government defended Samaritans against forced conversion by a Levantine warlord.
However, forced conversions also did happen, just like with any other religion. While Muslim rule in Spain was often good, there were some terrible periods too. The Almohad (Sunni) dynasty in particular forced a lot of Christians or Jews to convert or leave, and in a somewhat interesting story, the famous Jewish writer Maimonides was forced to convert to Islam and later kicked out of Spain. He found his way to Egypt, where he converted back to Judaism, was tried in a Sharia court for apostasy, but then set free by the Sharia judge on the grounds that his conversion to Islam had been forced. (pulled this story from Bernard Lewis' book, The Jews of Islam). The Devsirme system is also a terrible blot on Muslim history, where the Ottomans (Sunni) took boys from the Balkans, converted them to Islam, and then turned them into the elite shock troops of the empire, the Jannissaries. I suppose you could try and soften the blow by saying that those boys eventually become generals, viziers, and top ranking officials in the Ottoman state, which is a pretty high ceiling for what essentially began as forced conversion (Sinan Pasha, a Serb boy, eventually became the Ottoman general who conquered the Yemen and was the Ottoman Prime Minister 5 times over 2 decades) but taking kids from their parents is a pretty terrible thing to do no matter what.
I don't know that any Sunni group advocates for forced conversion other than the Wahhabis. The Qur'an is fairly anti-forced conversion if you read the text (no compulsion in religion, etc.) and this recent trend towards extremist forced conversion is definitely a product of the extremist Wahhabi branch of Islam that is taught out of Saudi mosques, Saudi funded mosques, and Saudi funded preachers. Wahhabism forms the backbone of most if not all jihadist groups in the world today.
The Shi'a Ismaili- my sect's - approach to conversion was historically that of an underground movement due to constant persecution. Shi'a movements in general functioned this way. The way the system worked is that the Imam - the central religious authority for Shi'a, basically on par with Muhammad in terms of religious authority with the exception that the Imam didn't receive any new guidance, just interpreted and applied what was already there - would send out his missionaries to different parts of the world, and the missionaries would adapt Ismaili beliefs into other languages and cultures. For example, when Ismaili missionaries arrived in India, they taught Islam to locals through Hindu symbols, like referring to Allah as Shiva or Vishnu, and to the first Imam, Ali, as Ram or Hari, the Qur'an as a "Guru book" and in various Indian languages rather than Arabic. Only recently, in the 20th and 21st century under the previous and current Imams, has the practice become somewhat standardized for Ismailis - prayers in Arabic, service in local language (so English in the US and Canada, French in France, Portuguese in Portugal, and Urdu/Hindi/Gujarati in Pakistan and India, though last time I went back some things had shifted over to English since most Ismailis are well educated and speak English).
I am ignorant about goings on in Egypt and El-Sisi, though I think he's more of a military dictator than a religious ideologue. And you are right about Salafist beliefs (Salafist = Wahabbi, same thing) taking root in Turkey. Shame, because Turkey used to be one of the most vibrant Sufi cultures in the Muslim world. Like I replied to an earlier post, throughout history many Muslims have been either Shia or Sunni but also adhered to Sufi esoteric practices as well. The decline of this esoteric practice in favor of hardline movements like Salafism, funded by Saudi money, which are holdovers from an Anti-European colonial era, has been one of the contributing factors to Muslim violence in the past few decades.
