"Islam "signifies resignation or submission to God ,and 'Musulman 'means
'subject'. Allah is the one God ,and it is therefore logical that all His
servants should regard it as their duty to enforce obidance to Allah upon
the believers.What they [the Arabs] proposed was not ,as many have thought,their
conversion, but their subjection . And this subjection they went . After
the conquest they asked nothing better than to appropriate the sience and
art of the infidels as a part of their booty ; they would cultivate them
to the glory of Allah. They would even adopt the institutions of the unbelieversin
so far as these were useful to them "(Henri Pirenne,Mohammed and Charlemagne,tr.Bernard
Miall [reprinted;New York : Meridian Books ,1961] pp.150-151)