Was Islam a Theological Threat to the Church?

When Muslims talk about the early Islamic invasions, they often talk about how Monophysites, Jews, and other religious minorities welcomed the Muslims as liberators from the oppressive Roman Empire. When one reads the early sources, they search in vain for references to this event.  But how did the Roman Christians get treated?

Starting in the 630s, Muslims ruled over areas that were predominantly Christian.  While most of these places are majority Islamic today, how exactly did it happen?  Were the Christians just so mesmorized by the Quran, Mutah, and Tawheed that they saw no other choice but to convert?  Was that the case of was something else involved?

I’ve made St. Theophanes the Confessor my prime source of early Islamic history.  I will use his writings as a reference.

In the same year, because there had been a strong earthquake in Syria, Umar banned wine from his cities and forced the Christians to apostasize.  He exempted the apostates from taxation but killed those who refused, which made many martyrs.  He promulgated a law that a Christian’s testimony against a Saracen was not acceptable.  He also sent a doctrinal letter to the Emperor Leo, thinking to persuade him to apostasize.

– September 1, 717-August 31, 718

Not exactly peaceful conversion.  Perhaps this is what Mohammed Hijab meant when he said that Islam spread organically.

Salim also commanded that no new churches should be built, that the cross should not be displayed, and that Christians should not enter into religious discussion with Arabs.

– September 1, 756-August 31, 757

The native Christians in their land had restrictions placed on them by a foreign occupying force.  Religious discussion with Arabs was prohibited.  This actually fascinates me.  They would only put in a law like this if the Muslims weren’t doing well in these religious discussions.  Bart Ehrman was over 1,200 years off so they were in trouble.

In this year Abd Allah increased the taxes on the Christians, so that all monks, solitary monks, and pillar-sitters (who are pleasing to God) had to pay taxes.  He also sealed the churches’ treasuries and brought in Hebrews to sell them; they were purchased by freedmen.

– September 1, 757-August 31, 758

Why were the Muslims doing this?  The only reasonable conclusion is that there wasn’t conversions going on through preaching.  If Muslims were winning the debates and their Christians opponents were taking the shahada when it was over, it would not have been banned by the Muslim ruling authorities; it would have been promoted.

I’m actually encouraged by this history.  The Christians of the eighth century never found Islam to be a compelling religion.  They never found their arguments good and had to be converted by other means.  In a way this reminds me of Elizabethan England.  Queen Elizabeth knew that her father’s religion couldn’t stand up to Catholicism on its own and needed strong government promotion.

Now, I would never insult Islam by saying that they were as bad as Queen Elizabeth.  They clearly weren’t and this can be shown by William Cobbett in A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland.

Regarding Queen Elizabeth, Cobbett writes:

Historians have been divided in opinion as to which was the worst man that England ever produced, her father or Cranmer; but all mankind must agree that this was the worst woman that ever existed in England, or in the whole world, Jezebel herself not excepted.