Originally Posted by Demonstrative

While Arabia is the cradle of Islam, I always fail to comprehend why people take the history of Arabs synonymous with history of Islam. What does "Islam was spread by sword" actually refer to? If it implies that Muslims conquered vast swathes of land then hardly anyone can gainsay that. If that means that Islam was shoved down people's throat then the opinion will vary.

The reasons why Muslim despots set their heart to the conquest of near and distant lands was hardly for the glory of Islam. The lust for power, the avarice for war booty, the intent to keep the belligerent clans from butchering one another, the machinations of Romans and Persians and countless other factors paved way for all those conquests. If at all Islam ever was somewhere, it must have been at the bottom of the list.

Coming to the people who embraced Islam... there were those who genuinely started to believe that it was the path of salvations, there were others who embraced just to avoid poll tax, still others who embraced it to fight the non-Muslims and have their chunk from the booty; the list can go on and on.

I do not find sufficient evidence to deduce that people were always coerced to embrace Islam. At least this was not the case with adherents of Abrahamic religions. Even today, there are around 10 million Coptic Christians in the Middle East. As to Zoroastrians, Prophet (P.B.U.H) had himself ordained Muslims to treat them like Muslims treated People of the Book. The only exception could be pagans who probably do not have any footprint in the ME.