its shade, basking in security and safety, and enjoying their rights in full, without the least diminution.

Yet those peoples—idol-worshippers, People of the Book, and others—have, from the very dawn of this call, met it, its Prophet, and his followers with hostility, rejection, and conspiracy. They confronted it on the battlefield with weapons and spears; in the realm of thought with debate, the casting of doubts, and malicious false propaganda, wielding their oppressive and unjust media; in the economic and social sphere through blockade and lavish spending to turn people away from the path of Allah; and in the political arena by violating treaties and covenants, plotting and scheming night and day.

Allah, exalted be He, has related in His noble Book their stance, their enmity toward Islam and the Muslims, and their united front to achieve their aims and designs. Then the tangible record of history—ancient and modern—came to confirm and verify this. The story of the Crusades is not far removed from us: those brutal wars whose origin lay in the early conflict between the Muslims and the Romans. In more recent forms this has appeared as warfare against the Muslims and aggression upon them in Palestine and in all the lands partitioned among the French, the British, the Italians, and the Dutch colonizers.

In our own days we have witnessed the barbaric onslaught against Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chechnya, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Kashmir, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Before that there were the campaigns of genocide in the Soviet Union, in India, likewise in Kashmir, in Yugoslavia, in Ethiopia, and in other regions where non-Muslims hold sway or gain the upper hand, whether