Divine-mission confidence and religious tolerance fueled conquest success

Evidence

All this confirmed the Muslims’ belief that God was on their side; as a seventh-century patriarch of Jerusalem complained, they boast that they are subduing the whole world. This self-assured sense of divine mission certainly was a key factor in the success and rapidity of the conquests. At least as important was the freedom of religion guaranteed to most of its non-Muslim subjects. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 243

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to reader’s genealogy goal: juxtaposes Muslim self-understanding with the religious-freedom policy — grounding material against one-dimensional ‘forced conversion’ framing in modern Islamophobic tropes.
• SEED: Article angle: how a seventh-century patriarch’s complaint inverts the modern Islamophobic fear-trope — the conquered complaining the conqueror believes he’ll subdue the world.