13. "Will ye not do battle with a people (the Meccans) who have broken their covenant and aimed to expel your Apostle and attacked you first? Will ye dread them? God truly is more worthy of your fear if ye are believers!"
14. "Make war on them: By your hands will God chastize them and put them to shame, and give victory over them, and heal the bosom of a people who believe."
36. " ... and attack those who join gods with God one and all, as they attack you one and all."—Sura, ix.
18. What the above-quoted verses show.
I need not repeat here what these verses and the facts related above show, that the wars of Mohammad with the Koreish were merely defensive, and the Koreish were the aggressors, and that Mohammad was quite justified in taking up arms against them.
"In the state of nature every man has a right to defend," writes Mr. Edward Gibbon,[173] "by force of arms, his person and his possessions; to repel, or even to repeat, the violence of his enemies, and to extend his hostilities to a reasonable measure of satisfaction and retaliation. In the free society of the Arabs, the duties of subject and citizen imposed a feeble restraint; and Mahommed, in the exercise of a peaceful and benevolent mission, had been despoiled and banished by the injustice of his countrymen." It has been fully shown in the foregoing paragraphs that the Moslems in Mecca enjoyed neither safety nor security. Religious freedom was denied to them, though they were harmless and peaceful members of the community. Besides this they were expelled from their homes, leaving their families and their property in the hands of their persecutors, and were prevented from returning to Mecca, and were refused access to the Sacred Mosque; and, above all, they were attacked by the Meccans in force at Medina.
19. Justification of the Moslems in taking up arms against their aggressors.
The persecution of the early Moslems by the Koreish was on religious grounds. They would not allow the believers to renounce the religion of their forefathers and profess Islam. Their intolerance was so strong and harsh that they tortured some of the professors of the new faith to renounce the same and to rejoin their former idolatry. "Taking away the lives, the fortune, the liberty, any of the rights of our brethren, merely for serving their Maker in such manner as they are persuaded they ought, when by so doing they hurt not human society, or any member of it, materially, is evidently inconsistent with all justice and humanity: for it is punishing those who have not injured us, and who, if they mistake, deserve only pity from us."[174] The early Moslems had had every international right to resent persecution and intolerance of the Meccans and to establish themselves by force of arms, to enjoy their religious liberty and to practise their religion freely.
20. The first aggression after the Hegira was not on the part of Mohammad.