What is islam considers freedom?
While God Almighty has shown right and wrong to human beings whom He created conscious and free, He never interfered with their free will. Everyone will choose with their free will and then will have to face the consequences himself. The noble verses of the Quran state:
“(My messenger!) If it had been your Lord’s will, they would all have believed – all who are on earth! Will you then compel mankind, against their will, to believe?” (Yunus (Jonah), 10:99)
“Let him who will, believe, and let him who will, disbelieve” (Al-Kahf (The Cave), 18:29)
“If you reject ((Allah)), Truly Allah has no need of you; but He likes not ingratitude from His servants: if you are grateful, He is pleased with you.” (Az-Zumar (The Companies), 39:7)
In the time of Ignorance, women whose children faced severe illness in infancy used to pledge to God, “If my child lives I will make him a Jew.” For this reason, when the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir were being exiled from the city of Medina after breaching their agreement with Our Master the Prophet, there were among them the Judaized children of new Muslims. The Muslim relatives of these children said: “We will not leave our children (We will hold them by force and force them to become Muslims).” As a result of this God Almighty revealed the verse “There is no compulsion in religion.”[1]
Islam does not want to force itself on people by force. For this reason, it avoids all forms of imposition. It even steers clear of intellectual coercion. Miracles, for example, have not been one of the principal means of the spread of Islam. Asking for miracles based on the wondrous phenomena that occurred at the hands of HE Prophet has not been welcome. Since Islam coincided with an era when humanity has matured, it spoke to the intellect and mind by the verbal miracle of the Quran. It bonded human beings with itself through rational rules and convincing evidence. For this reason it never used physical force as a means.
Famous English historian Philip Marshall Brown wrote, “Even though they gained great victories, the Turks graciously granted the peoples in the countries they conquered the right to self-administer according to their own customs and traditions.”
When Napoleon Bonaparte attacked the Ottoman Empire during the years 1798-1799, he wanted to have the Armenians living in Palestine and Syria rebel. The ambassador of France in Istanbul, Sebastiani, responded to him: “The Armenians are so content with their lives here that it is impossible to manipulate them to rebel.”[2]
[1] Al Baqara (The Cow), 2: 256. Abu Dawud, Jehad, 116/2682; Vâhidî, pp. 85-87.
[2] See http//www.atmg.org/ArmenianProblem.html.
Source: Dr. Murat Kaya,The Final Divine Religion: ISLAM
