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"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

This Byzantine emperor got it, that nothing good has every come or will ever come from Islam. "You can tell a tree by its fruit" said Jesus. "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit". How more evident is that statement than in the last 1,400 years of Islam?

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

That was hardly new, and hardly unique to Islam. The difference is that Christians no longer attempt to spread their faith by coercion, while Islam continues to do so, and sometimes to simply slaughter for slaughter’s sake. The Thugist sect of Hinduism no longer exists, however, and Sati-ing one’s favorite wife is no longer practiced in Hindu-ism, both thanks to the imperialist coercion of the Christian British Empire.

Is that an example of the Christian concept of “by their fruits shall ye know them?” Only in part. The Chassidic reformation came about as a result of the terrible atrocities of Bogdan Chmelnicki’s Kossacks, who attempted to convert entire communities of Jews to Christianity, and when they refused, slaughtered them one by one. From the terrible poverty that resulted, and from the false Messianic movement of Shabetai Tzvi, the Baal Shem Tov and his students arose and reconciled mysticism with Halachic Judaism. The violent pogroms of 13th Century Spain led to the destruction of the upper class Jews, the Inquisition and the auto da fe.

Sometimes a bad tree, taken under care of a good gardener, can produce good fruit. Sometimes a good tree, left to its own devices or sabotaged by malice, can produce bad fruit or no fruit. Man is likened to the tree of the field, and like a tree must be cultivated and nurtured to produce good fruits.