What are you referring to, when you say "we"? Neither is there "one" islam nor is your specific personal faith identical to what muslims in egypt believed around 700-800 AD. Sure islamism is very dogmatic and has a strong ideal of imperial cohesion (as in: "we vs everyone else"), so that might sound like heresy to you, but not only are there many sects of islam, and there were even more when the majority was illiterate and followed their local teachers, your particular faith is probably very modern and thus devoid of the mysticism and superstition that was omnipresent at that time.
To be clear, yes there are alot of different sects in Islam but in Islam there is one core thing that no matter what, it never changes and that is the Quran (Islam holy book). How its preserved is an entirely different topic but its a book which all Muslims no matter the sect should follow clearly.
Islam sects came to be from different interpretations of certain verses by certain scholars but some verses/core messages are very explicit that there is no question about it, its what would put you under the umbrella of "Islam", some which include idolatry and that its absolutely prohibited and that statues have no power and they wont grant you any blessings nor protection. This is what I was referring to when I say we.
Of course some people will still go out of their way to say no or might very clearly misunderstood or be quite misguided because they were illiterate which would lead to believing many such superstitions but it would be quite a stretch to say thats all Islam where its clearly isnt
You seem to miss my point: i am saying you can't speak for the people conquering egypt in 700AD. You can't describe what they believed, because unlike them you grew up in a culture that eradicated polytheism centuries ago and has only a very abstract idea of what that even means. You can't fathom how people thought in a world where the vast majority of their neighbours burned incenses in front of statues. Yes the hadith calls for violence against such people and their idols, i am not denying that, i am not saying you can't make an educated guess what happened back then, what i am saying is that you should speak for yourself, not for some imaginary "we". Tell me, when you say "we only do it" do you say that you yourself destroyed such statues?
You are right, it was ignorant of me to generalize and phrase it that way. I apologize for this. In hindsight what I was trying to say was: As a current day muslim, what I think based on my core Islamic knowledge & history is that their reason of doing it would be because of said islamic belief which they should have been following specifically since they were converting the churches to mosques.
