Even more absurd is the grand imam’s claim that the Christian and Zoroastrian peoples living under the Eastern Roman and Sassanian empires were happy to be “liberated” by the sword of Islam, and that—seeing that Islam was a religion of “knowledge, justice, freedom, and equality”—they eagerly responded by converting in droves.
As is well known, the supposedly “liberated” peoples—the ones to survive the initial massacres and enslavements, anyway—who preferred to remain Christian, Zoroastrian, or Jewish, could do so only by becoming dhimmis, second-class citizens who had to make regular tribute (jizya) payments and adhere to a host of humiliating social strictures (as captured in the “Conditions of Omar”). The desire not to be financially fleeced or treated inferiorly—or sporadically persecuted, as many dhimmis were, depending on whether the next ruler was “radical” or not—is what caused so many non-Muslims to convert to Islam over the centuries.
This was the only way they could experience “justice, freedom, or equality”—at least of a sort.