The First Jihad Or Crusade

    Muhammad supposedly exiled two Jewish tribes in Medina and destroyed all the males of the third tribe, and took their property.  Then he began raiding caravans passing by from Mecca that were not owned by Muslims. He went with his warriors to murder, mutilate, loot, rape, and enslave females and young men. He assured his men that they would go to Pardise if killed in battle while his enemies would go to hell. These are called the first jihads apparently.
    I fail to see anything noble or religious about such jihads. Before the Industrial Revolution, the way to get rich was to loot. There was nothing noble or religious about it even if people, including Muhammad, said it was. It was simply making money and growing your power. In addition, Muhammad was teaching that Islam had lethal superiority over all religions. People of all other religions could be killed, looted, raped, mutilated, enslaved. Where did that come from? The Quaran, the book he said was given to him in pieces by the Archangel Gabriel over twenty years and finally written down long after his death.
    Thinking about warriors about go to war, I visualized a US Army Chaplain giving a prayer before a battle to the young men who get killed while the politicians and their sons stayed home. I cannot visualize a US Army chaplain supporting anything that Muhammad was doing in the above paragraph including making Christianity so superior and so intolerant that the troops should be advised that the "enemy" soldiers (other young men who were also forced to serve while the politicians and their sons stayed at home) were going to hell if they died in battle. It's just too fragile and hateful for the US Army as I visualize it. I took alleged facts from Glenn Beck's It Is About Islam, page 39.
    Peter Nickerson, Philosophy Major, Class of '68, College of William and Mary.