Practicing, Preaching, and Proselytizing Islam in Multi-religious Societies in World History

LA ILAHA ILLALLAH, “there is no god but Allah.”  This fundamental tenet of tawheedor Islamic Monotheism simultaneously not only negates the existence of all other deities; it also affirms the divinity of the only one true God, Allah---all in one breath.  It is truly the most exclusive and iconoclastic claim that rejects the notion of anyone being divine except Allah. 

And yet, as this paper argues, Islam and Muslims, since the very beginning, have coopted as well as created multi-religious societies in different spaces and times in history. 

This paper also argues that it is relevant that Islam started in the centuries’ old Meccan multi-religious society.  Islam denied pagan gods, and fought their adherents, on the one hand, but coexisted with the followers of Christianity and Judaism on the other.  Was or is there an Islamic preference for one or another kind of religion that spurred or stopped Muslims from refusing or respecting the existence and maintenance of a multi-religious society?    

Based on the Quran and Hadith, the two main religious sources of the Islamic law, the Sharia, did Islam command Muslims to wipe out and yet simultaneously do business with non-Muslims?  What divine orders and/or worldly circumstances made Muslims to live in and let live multi-religious societies will be the questions that this paper will try to explore.  And, finally, does Islam really believe in the existence and maintenance of a multi-religious society?