Re: The US diplomatic missions attacked in Egypt and Libya
That’s an interesting take, but the fact is, those who conquer almost always believe they have divine providence.
With pagans, they had an ability to take in local deities.
With monotheistic faiths, that was never an option, and that does include Christian Rome.
On the other hand, the view of Islamic expansion as purely religious is nonsensical.
Persia. Fell into Muslim hands in 637, but did not Islamicize until the 10th century, and that too in quite a distinct manner from the Arabs.
Byzantium/Rome. Never Fully fell, but a long standing conflict began. This conflict began with hostilities initiated by their client states against the early Ummah.
Jizya - a compromise, where the early Muslims were not ones to compromise on matters of faith. It was political.
Indeed, these early conquests can only rationally be looked upon as political ventures, especially during later Muslim empires which were very much imperialist in their outlook. The religious overtone is also to be found in the later, more sophisticated, Christian experiment with Imperialism and later colonialism.
What drove Muslims is a sense of Muslims not being able to practice Islam without being dominant. That was the Rashadin reality, and that probably became the Ummayad operating theory: you are either conquered (and loose your faith), or you conquer.
Missing from the discussion is the extent to which Christians went to re-introduce Christianity and Christian dominance into lands occupied by Muslims. It was not merely political. The Spanish cleansing of Spain is much more through and directed, and simply cannot be compared to the loose and lacklusture conversion efforts by Muslims in Byzantium and Persia.
Also note that Malaysia and Indonesia did not have military contact with Muslims. Nor did mainland China, yet the Muslim arrival and political discourse with China is markedly distinct from that of Persia and Rome. The battle of Talas may have secured Abbasid (I think) influence over central asia, but it really didn’t lead to long standing hostilities with China, at least not from the Arabs.
The spread of Islam is a complex subject. Reducing it down to “it spread by war” is laughable.
Finally, the purest and most recent example of attempting to spread an ideology through force was the last Gulf war. The only coherent stated reason for that war was the removal of a tyrant, and the establishment of freedom and democracy. Thus, democracy is currently being spread by the bomb…sword I suppose is much too old school. So one doesn’t really need to bend back so far as to discuss Nazis and Commies.