> If you asked me if Rome was peaceful, I would tell you no. But no one is claiming that Rome is peaceful. Once again, there is nothing peaceful about conquering your neighbors, especially ones that didn't attack you first.

Well, some would claim that Rome was peaceful, in the same way that historians may later claim that the US was peaceful. To be honest, it's virtually impossible to stay peaceful when it's kill or be killed. The Romans always had justifications for their wars (often contrived, but still), but I take the converse position.

> Next you will argue that Russia had the right to attack UkraIne because Kievan Rus attacked the people that lived in the areas that are now Russia centuries ago.

I think you're interpreting this backwards. I'm saying that the Arabs were well-aware of the rapacious appetite for war their immediate neighbors had after watching the Persians duke it out with the Romans (and Byzantines) for centuries, with firsthand experience of serving in their militaries and watching their (Arab) leaders become enriched. It's not that the Arabs themselves didn't war on the peninsula, but...

Imagine that you're someone who's watched repeated proxy wars from foreign powers, and maybe even taken part in them. For this example, let's use the American colonists. You've watched the French and British recruit your friends and neighbors, either by coercion or bribery, to fight and die for someone else. Now, they've worn each other out, and you have a chance to remove their influence once and for all to put a better society in place. To do this, you need to wipe them off the map (the Americans did this regionally, but Canada was so underpopulated and the rest of the Empire so far away that it's effectively equivalent).

Is this just? Is this peaceful, in the end? To some, yes. To the Arabs, probably.

Yes, there were religious motivations, but it's exactly the same kind of "manifest destiny" that spread the American dominion coast-to-coast. Is it externally peaceful? No. Is the end result (internally) more peaceful? Yes.

(discussions about the relative peace of First Nations elsewhere, since we really can't say what the balance of force was like before European intervention due to lack of documentation, but the loss of territory to the Americans and introduction of horses/gunpowder definitely provided conflict).

> I don't know enough detail to comment on it either way. "I'm not arguing that sharia is a modern, progressive system of law." - we are on the same page then. With that, comes the idea that any comments on "peaceful" and "rightfully counter-attacking" would only, possibly apply in the context of the time.

That's the point, really. History must be evaluated in historical context. It's easy for us to look back now and say "of course the caliphate was warlike" or "of course the Romans were warlike", but that's hindsight. To a denizen of southern Gaul living in 200AD, you'd have a hard time arguing that it was anything but peaceful, and that Rome imposing her dominion on a bunch of barbarians was the best thing that ever happened.

> Edit: I know it's against the rules, but I just want to note that I am not the one downvoting you, appreciate a good argument once in a while.

> implying I care about internet karma points

But really, I don't. I come here to the internet for discussion