[Skybird]

When you accept to simply ignore the fact that Muhammad intimidated or pushed by force his rulership over Arab tribessince he fled from Mekka and arrived in Medina, and when you ignore that he repeatedly attacked Jewish tribes and tried to kill them, and when you ignore that in the past years of his life he sent his troops - and mostly commanded himself - on around 70 occasions against Arabb and toher triobes that fell off his cult and claim for power, or threatened to do so, when you simply ignore all this and say it is not true, then communciations become smeaningless. It is true - there is not a single book on Islam I ever read where it is not told like this. You can be picky and say that soemtimes his approaching war band already was enough a threat to bring the rebllious tribe back into line, okay - but to me the thread of force and the actual using of force in this context makes not much a difference.

Islam has conquered by force territories that were not it'S own, and where it was not present orignally. Bycantine empire at that time was engaged in a long series of wars that came in the wake of the splitting of Rome, especially with the Sassanides from Persia, and at the time of Muhammad, Konstantinopel already was deadlocked and paralysed with an inefficient bureaucratic administration, and resulting inner tensions and powerstruggles that seriously hampered it'S ability to project military influence over all of the former Roman empire'S territory in the East - that is the reason why the not much loved rule of the Bycantinians in North africa was relatively easy to be broken up by Islam in a series of combinations of conquests and intimidations and briberies. Before, the Rabas had traded with both the Sassanides and the Bycantinians, and much of the wealth of the Quraysh that let them come to great influence and power and destabilised the social system of the tribal societies of the Arabs, was due to their profiteering from trading the Persians against the Eastromans.

Islam already moved aggressively against others to subjugate them when Muhammad still was alive - and that subjugation was because the others were not submitting to Islam/Muhammad. And that qulifies very well as aggression because of "the other not being Muslim". Who do you want to kidd here when saying Muhammad never attacked others for not being Muslim? Islam is designed on the basis of aggressive missionising, from beginning on. Muhammad, using "religion" as a tool to justify his claims for power and to make himself unavailable for any criticism without the critic risking assassination over claimed "heresy" and "offence" (it still runs like this today), missionised and subjigated by threteaning violence or using violence all the time, and for the rest of his life after he arrived in Medina.

So do not tell me he did not do like this. He did. And still today, Islam does like this, basing on the explanation that there are two houses, one of war and pone of peace, and there cannot be peace as long as there is the house of war, and thus the house of war must be overthrown.

You are denying one of the essential very basics, Stealth Hunter. I also want to remind you of Muhammad'S explicit attacks against the three Jewish tribes at Medina, and the effective genocides against one of them. For the standards of that time, wiping out all males of that tribe, estimations range between 700 and 900, and leading all girls and women into sexual slavery, by both deeds effectively ending the cultural tradition of that tribe, qualifies for what in the present we understand as "genoicde" according to the UN anti genocide convention.

On the individual level, Muhammad repeatedly ordered the assassination of critics, as well as unwanted characters that learned too much about his "spiritual link" towards Allah and that it was not any spiritual or holy or divine at all, but fiction.

Finally, Islam is deeply anti-semitic and hateful towards Jews, from beginning on.

Muhammad not acting against and attacking others for not being on his side, or not being Muhammeddan (=Muhammad'S loyal followers)...? Don't fool yourself.

BTW, you mentioned the jizyah in a context that gave me the impression you wanted to say that it was just a standard deal according to the diplomatic rules of that time, common habit so to speak. But the jizyah is to be payed by everybody not submitting to Islam, it is not just a singular action like in the case you described it. It is meant to be so humiliating and hurting that the other finally agrees to convert in order to escape it. It serves the same purpose as the mandatory discrimination of so-called dhimmis. - If the other converts, he has still to pay, the zakat, which is a moral-religious obligation that all Muslims have to serve as long as their wealth is in excess of the nisab, a financial threshold meaning that if you have less than the nisab, you are freed from the duty for zakat. But different to the jizyah, which is nothing else but protection money, the zakat indeed is an internal regular payment of Muslims to their communities, it could be seen as a social wellfare tax, but it could also support jihad, since a separation of political and religious orientation in Islam does not exist. - Muhammad accepted moving Beduins which were hard to control, to not submit formally to Islam and his claim for power, as long as they payed the jizyah. So when he demanded the Bycantine representative to pay jizyah, he demanded nothing less than acceptance of a state of inferiority and submission, kind of, to Muhammad's claims. Today, time and again clerics and sometimes even politicians in Muslim countries demand that Western nations should pay jizyah to them. Many things given to them and done for them are taken for granted and as if they are natural, because the sdame attitude of mind tells them that it is their right to demand the West always giving to them anyway. In Germany, even the Greens seem to raise demands now that German citizens shall pay an additional "solidarity money" (the second of this type, the first was meant for fiannciang the revuilkding of the East after reujnification), as it is called here, which should be used on boosting Islam in Germany and raise more Islamic institutions like mosques and culture centres that are hoped "to help integration".

A lack of such imjstitutions is hardly the problem with integrating Muslims. That there already are so very many such institutions and according communities, is likely the reason why integration failed.