"There was no propaganda, nor was any such pressure applied as was exerted by the Christians after the triumph of the church. `If God had so desired' says the Koran `He would have made all humanity a single people,' and it expressly condemns the use of violence in dealing with error. It requires only obedience to Allah, the outward obedience of inferior, degraded and despicable beings, who are tolerated, but who live in abjection. It was this that the infidel found so intolerable and demoralizing. His faith was not attacked; it was simply ignored; and this was the most effective means of detaching him from it and leading him to Allah, who would not only restore his human dignity, but would open to him the gates of the Musulman state. It was because his religion compelled the conscientious Musulman to treat the infidel as a subject that the infidel came to him, and in coming to him broke with his country and his people. The German became Romanized as soon as he entered `Romania.' The Roman, on the contrary, became Arabized as soon as he was conquered by Islam. . . . When it was converted to Christianity the Empire, so to speak, underwent a change of soul; when it was con verted to Islam both its soul and body were transformed. The change was as great in civil as in religious society" (Henri Pirenne,
Muhammed aud Charlemagne, tr. Bernard Miali [reprinted; New York: Meridian Books, 1961], pp.151-152).