If Islam is a religion of peace why did it expand through military conquests?

[kılıç_mehmet]

The vast majority Muslims seem perfectly peaceful to me but historically wasn't Islam as a faith a little bit warlike to begin with? You have all this land being conquered and major battle sites on the map here.

How do reconcile this aspect of the Islam with the principal that it was founded on the ideals of peace? If it was peaceful to begin with why didn't spread peacefully? Why didn't people just convert over to it on hearing how good and appealing it was as a true peace loving faith?

The Umayyads were, in my opinion, a fine, grand empire, that was built on militarism.
As all empires, their policies were expansionist, and like all expansionist empires, they had an ideal behind their expansionism. To spread the religion. Yes indeed, Islam can be a warlike religion, but nothing like the wannabes of today. The Umayyads were good warriors, strong and resolute, and frankly, they were the last Islamic empire which employed a pure-conquest based religious policy. Though to be honest, if not for the Umayyad, Islam may have had never been a far reaching religion. Their successors, the Abbasids, employed a much more milder approach, and the spread of Islam in the Abbasid period usually occured through the missions of Iranian and Turkish dervishes and sufi sheikhs, and it was them who converted my ancestors, we weren't converted through conquest. However, after the conversion, my ancestors became staunch warriors of the faith. I take pride in the martial history of our family and I'm proud to say that they were all descendants of Ghazis and frontiersman, however after they abandoned the nomadic lifestyle, they became sedentary and peaceful.

And I think the aggressive and peaceful periods of Islamic history are marked by mostly lifestyle changes of muslims.
During the Rashidun Umayyad periods, the Arabs had a nomadic and semi-nomadic bedoin presence within their ranks. As they progressed they met the nomadic Turks, that converted. In the Abbasid period, most of the Arab population had become sedentary and urbanized, and have busied themselves with the core tenets of the faith, praying, fasting and etc, while the spread of the religion by the sword passed to the hands of the then nomadic population of the Turks.

These continued to spread the faith through conquest, up until the Ottoman policies regarding the settlement of Turkoman clans took hold. Much stuff happened through this period, as many clans preferred a nomadic lifestlye yet still, but after settlement, many lost their warlike habits, and became peaceful peasantry and farmers, rather than warlike raiders bent on venturing deep into enemy lines for plunder and recoinassance. And to be honest, it had both its ups and downs.