Mamdouh Bitar, Othman Li:
A friend commented on the Muhammadan conquests in a denunciatory tone, saying that the early days of Islam carried out 33 conquests in 11 years, i.e., an average of three conquests per year. This prompted another friend to ask, “What’s the problem with 33 conquests? Conquests have always guaranteed peoples freedom of belief and faith. How can we understand the guarantee of freedom of belief through a conquest to spread another belief?” Therefore, the benefits of conquests were directly proportional to their number, violence, and military victories, followed by the subjugation and enslavement of other peoples. Our friend did not talk about the position of the targeted peoples from the invasion, nor did he ask them about their opinion of the invasion of their country. What would the friend have done as an inhabitant of the Levant if he was surprised by four armies and tens of thousands of swords besieging his city and slaughtering everyone who stood in their way? He had no doubt that these peoples would welcome the influx of desert civilization into their homes. That is, the decadence of the peoples of the Levant had turned these peoples into flocks eager for the arrival of a Bedouin guardian to prepare them and save them from backwardness and liberate them from the brutal Roman-Persian colonialism, and for the Bedouins to remain rulers forever. History has not known anyone more just and fair than them, said Le Bon! The problem with this view of the situation is not related to past events that have passed and have no continuity in the present, but rather to the problems of the present and the future, especially among peoples who have become a target for foreign invasion, such as the Arab peoples. How will a people be able to defend themselves against foreign invasion when this people believes that foreign invasion is a praiseworthy thing and there must be more of it? More invasion is proportional to more benefit. The friend who promoted the invasions, out of ignorance or bias, differentiated between his invasions as a hypothetical soldier of Khalid ibn al-Walid and their invasions, such as the Romans or others. His invasions are good, and their invasions are bad. His invasions are a blessing and their invasions are a curse. It is as if the friend speaks on behalf of Ibn al-Walid, Ubaidah, and Sharkhabil, in addition to Omar ibn al-Khattab and the whole gang of murderous, thieving conquerors, who considered the conquests a religious duty on the one hand, and on the other hand a rescue for these backward peoples, such as the peoples of the Levant. He stuck the concept of rescue and liberation as a justification for the recent Bedouin invasions at the hands of the Arabists. Were the peoples of the Levant really… Late compared to the Bedouin Hijazis? Conquests had nothing to do with the spoils of war, exploitation, and slavery, as some of the Zionist herd claim. The Bedouins came to liberate, rescue, and civilize these peoples without compensation…for God Almighty! God wanted a new religion for these peoples (the latest fad). God embraced the religion of the Chosen One, and God’s religion became Muhammadanism! Viewing occupations as great and the occupier as great is a very dangerous matter for the present and future of the peoples who practiced invasion, and who are no longer able to defend themselves against external invasion, like the Arab peoples, who have been afflicted with weakness and frailty. Whoever believes in the greatness of the phenomenon of invasion, victory, and occupation, provides a justification and a principled understanding for the invasion, i.e., for invading them from abroad, because invasion and victory are great!! Whoever promotes invasion and occupation as greatness cannot logically reject the occupation of his country by other invaders. Whoever supports the occupation of Spain as a clear conquest and greatness cannot reject the occupation of Palestine by the Zionists, because whoever is able to occupy Palestine despite the resistance of hundreds of millions of Arabs to this occupation is one of the greatest of greatness, not only historically but also morally. By the same logic, the Zionists’ achievement of an empire from the Euphrates to the Nile must be considered a great deed worthy of praise and pride. If the establishment of empires is greatness, then the Zionist empire is extremely great! There are standards for historical greatness. According to the standard of historical greatness, Omar Ibn Al-Khattab and his Arab Bedouin Empire must be considered among the greatest great men in the world. He is the one who defeated the Persian Empire and defeated the Roman Empire. This standard includes many who changed local, regional and global history, like some of the pharaohs, Ramses II, Darius the Persian, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Heraclius, Muawiyah, Abdul Malik, Al-Saffah, the first Abbasid Caliph, Saqr Quraish, the Ayyubid, Khalid Ibn Al-Walid, Genghis Khan, then Hulagu, Timur Lenk, Selim I, Muhammad Al-Fatih, Ferdinand, Isabella, Sultan Persia, then Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Stalin, Abdulaziz Al Saud and many others,This standard of historical greatness is false because it is not in harmony with morals and higher values, but rather with the extent of the regional and global influence of these leaders and their ability to change the reality of war in a way that guarantees the establishment of their empire and secures the acquisition of spoils of war, without taking into account the will of other peoples, and without taking into account the millions of dead, then the seas of blood and mountains of skulls and limbs, and the transition after that to slavery, plunder and looting, and ensuring the continuity of all of that through the religion with which and for which Omar Ibn Al-Khattab and his companions fought fabricatedly. The influence of the hero who deserved or assumed the title of great is not limited to the battle that He won with it and then its direct consequences on the people, but the continuation of all that even to the grandchildren of the grandchildren of the grandchildren, and in our Arab case there is a continuation of that sick mentality until this moment, there are those who sanctify Omar, and the sanctification of the “great” kings and leaders continues until this moment, the subjugation and humiliation of others as greatness was reflected internally in the form of the humiliation and subjugation of peoples, the mentality of hunting and the spoils of war was also reflected internally in the form of corruption, the colonization of the outside was reflected inward as internal colonization, and what does the one afflicted with the curse of colonialism do when he does not find anything externally that he can colonize! The slaughter of others abroad has turned In addition to slaughtering people at home, everything the conquests did with peoples abroad was transformed into practices at home.