What is the negative effect of the spread of Islam?

Answer 1

Another answer from our community:

Spread of Islam has positive effects and no negative effect. Islam religion accepts other religions but other religions do not. Muslims believe in all God prophets including Jesus and Moses and accordingly they respect their followers. However, Christians and Jews don't believe in Muhammad, Muslims prophet. That is why you never hear in history about Muslims committing Massacres to non Muslims but you find in history many non Muslims committing massacres to Muslims. Compare when Muslims took control of Spain how they spread peace and civilization while when non Muslims gained control of the country what massacres they made against Muslims.

Islam is a religion of submission to God and of peace and love but media visualize it in opposite sense to serve their own political agendas.

Answer 2

It is true that overall, the spread of Islam was more benign and peaceful than that of Christianity, but this is not a reason to take a starry-eyed view of Islam.

Most non-Muslim scholars step gingerly around the issue of Muslim atrocities, but Ibn Warraq is clearly an apostate and so both well-informed and more willing to be forthright in his book, Why I am Not a Muslim. It is easy to criticise him because of his apostacy, but he does cite credible scholars and evidence when he discusses contentious issues. Some of his claims:

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  During the campaign of 634, the entire region between Gaza and Caesaria was devastated; 4000 peasants - Christians, Jews and Samaritans - were massacred.
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  During the campaign in Mesopotamia between 635 and 642, monastaries were sacked, the monks killed and Monophysite Arabs executed or forced to convert.
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  As Amr advanced into Egypt, he captured the town of Behnesa near the Fayum and exterminated the inhabitants, even after surrendering. The same fate occurred at Nikiu.
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  In Armenia, the entire population of Euchaita was wiped out. Seventh century Armenian chronicles recount how the Arabs decimated the population of Assyria and forced a number of inhabitants to accept Islam.
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  Michael the Syrian tells how Mu'awiya sacked and pillaged Cyprus and then established his dominion by a great massacre.
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  In North Africa, Tripoli was pillaged in 643, and Carthage was razed to the ground and most of its inhabitants killed.
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  The conquest of India, initially undertaken in 712, then completed in the early eleventh century, was similarly accompanied by extreme bloodshed and pillage. Ibn Warraq provides some blood-curdling examples of what happened here. He says that between 1000 and 1200, Buddhism disappeared from India,through the combined effects of its own weaknesses, a revived Hinduism and Mohammedan persecution.

These might have been isolated instances and exceptions to the rule, but it is still wise to recognise that there have been negative effects of the early spread of Islam.