It is no accident that the Messenger (saw) graduated from being a shepherd into being a trader in his early manhood.
And that from where I take my roots, and for countless others, Muslim traders came into contact with indigenous populations and it was not their promulgation of the idea of Islam that led to it’s spread, but rather it was the simple attraction of a nobler way of living.
That those traders by their very adoption of the nobility that the idea of Islam engenders in a person’s character, caused its spread without any design to do so.
Indeed even when Muslim armies conquered towns and cities within the Levant, and further afield, they did not garrison those towns but instead took garrison outside of those towns. They left the civil administration untouched, and rather confirmed people in their authority.
Theirs was to provide protection, and to pay for any service that they took, or meal that they had.
Once again even here it must have been the traders who came most into contact with local populations, and it must be because of that contact that we now call both Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Maghreb our home lands.
When you think about it a bit, trade underlies really every human interaction.
It’s the give and take, the very stuff of community.
And a good trade takes place when you find something that a person values more highly than you yourself, or than those that you broker for.
For Muslims we know the reality of things better than most, that the wealth of this World is but the glitter.
And that the most valuable of things is belief itself.
For the Messenger (saw) explained to Ali (ra) that to bring one person into the fold of true belief is better than a hundred red camels.
And he (saw) advised Muad (ra) on dispatching him as governor to the Yemen to make it easy for the people.
That when we want people to appreciate the beauty of our way of life, it is a simple price to heed their customs that with us carry no value.
For we know, by God’s good grace, the true value of things.
And it is this knowledge that is deep with meaning.
So much so that our forbears knew that if they came into contact with a method* that was better then any that we had, that we would adopt their method as our own.
And this was the understanding of those stalwarts that brought Islam to the World’s attention.
Of the earlier generations.
And not of those that came after them seeking legitimacy and orthodoxy.
Knowledge is sought through study and contemplation.
Not lectures, nor talks, nor this above.
*the method here does not entail the rituals and methods of our religion that should be fully protected. For any innovation away from them is a going astray.
