[Sidenote:  Al Kindy contrasts the Christian confessor with the Moslem “martyr.”  The Christian confessor and the Moslem martyr.] Before leaving this part of our subject it may be opportune to quote a few more passages from Al Kindy, in which he contrasts the inducements that, under the military and political predominance of Islam, promoted its rapid spread, and the opposite conditions under which Christianity made progress, slow, indeed, comparatively, but sure and steady.  First, he compares the Christian confessor with the Moslem “martyr:” 

I marvel much, he says, that ye call those martyrs that fall in war.  Thou hast read, no doubt, in history of the followers of Christ put to death in the persecutions of the kings of Persia and elsewhere.  Say, now, which are the more worthy to be called martyrs, these, or thy fellows that fall fighting for the world and the power thereof?  How diverse were the barbarities and kinds of death inflicted on the Christian confessors!  The more they were slain the more rapidly spread the faith; in place of one sprang up a hundred.  On a certain occasion, when a great multitude had been put to death, one at court said to the king, “The number of them increaseth instead of, as thou thinkest, diminishing.”  “How can that be?” exclaimed the king.  “But yesterday,” replied the courtier, “thou didst put such and such a one to death, and lo, there were converted double that number; and the people say that a man appeared to the confessors from heaven strengthening them in their last moments.”  Whereupon the king himself was converted.  In those days men thought not their lives dear unto them.  Some were transfixed while yet alive; others had their limbs cut off one after another; some were cast to the wild beasts and others burned in the fire.  Such continued long to be the fate of the Christian confessors.  No parallel is found thereto in any other religion; and all was endured with constancy and even with joy.  One smiled in the midst of his great suffering.  “Was it cold water,” they asked, “that was brought unto thee?” “No,” answered the sufferer, “it was one like a youth that stood by me and anointed my wounds; and that made me smile, for the pain forthwith departed.”

Now tell me seriously, my friend, which of the two hath the best claim to be called a martyr, “slain in the ways of the Lord:”  he who surrendereth his life rather than renounce his faith; who, when it is said, Fall down and worship the sun and moon, or the idols of silver and gold, work of men’s hands, instead of the true God, refuseth, choosing rather to give up life, abandon wealth, and forego even wife and family; or he that goeth forth, ravaging and laying waste, plundering and spoiling, slaying the men, carrying away their children into captivity, and ravishing their wives and maidens in his unlawful embrace, and then shall call it “Jehad in the ways of the Lord!” ...  And not content therewith,