See Discover Islam page here.

According to the poster:

The Muslim community continued to grow after Prophet Muhammad's death. Within a few decades, vast numbers of people across three continents—Africa, Asia, and Europe—had chosen Islam as their way of life.

One of the reasons for the rapid and peaceful spread of Islam was the purity of its doctrine—Islam calls for faith in only one God.

The author certainly has an interesting perspective on the definition of the word "peaceful." According to the USC MSA, the Islamic expansion in the fifty years after Muhammad's death in the year 632 involved more than 30 "peaceful" battles, more than 15 "peaceful" conquests, more than 10 "peaceful" campaigns, plus a smattering of "peaceful" raids and "peaceful" sieges.

Consider one such battle—the Battle of the Yarmuk in Syria on the 20th of August, 636—as described in "The Origins of the Islamic State," a translation of a book written by Muslim historian al-Baladhuri (d. 892). In this battle, the Muslims faced a 200,000 man strong army put together by Byzantine emperor Heraclius:

The Muslims gathered together and the Greek army marched against them. The battle they fought at al-Yarmuk was of the fiercest and bloodiest kind. Al-Yarmuk [Hieromax] is a river. In this battle 24,000 Moslems took part. The Greeks and their followers in this battle tied themselves to each other by chains, so that no one might set his hope on flight. By Allah's help, some 70,000 of them were put to death, and their remnants took to flight, reaching as far as Palestine, Antioch, Aleppo, Mesopotamia and Armenia. In the battle of al-Yarmuk certain Moslem women took part and fought violently. Among them was Hind, daughter of 'Utbah and mother of Mu'awivah ibn-abi-Sufyan, who repeatedly exclaimed, "Cut the arms of these 'uncircumcised', with your swords!"

As one more example, in the year 642, the Muslims conquered Egypt, led by 'Amr ibn Al-Asi. According again to al-Baladhuri's account, 'Amr arrived in Alexandria and "reduced the city by the sword and plundered all that was in it." But rather than kill its inhabitants, he instead "reduced them to the position of dhimmis," leaving them humiliated and requiring them to pay poll-tax. Constantine, son of Heraclius, sent hundreds of ships to try to reclaim Alexandria.

'Amr set out at the head of 15,000 men and found the Greek fighters doing mischief in the Egyptian villages next to Alexandria. The Moslems met them and for one hour were subjected to a shower of arrows, during which they were covered by their shields. They then advanced boldly and the battle raged with great ferocity until the polytheists were routed; and nothing could divert or stop them before they reached Alexandria. Here they fortified themselves and set mangonels. 'Amr made a heavy assault, set the ballistae, and destroyed the walls of the city. He pressed the fight so hard until he entered the city by assault, killed the fathers and carried away the children as captives. Some of its Greek inhabitants left to join the Greeks somewhere else; and Allah's enemy, Manuwil, was killed.

The decades immediately following Muhammad's death did indeed see a very rapid spread of Islam, as shown by the map below (from the US Government Document Depository). But peaceful it was not.



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