01-23-2007, 01:45 AM
<b>Commentary: Hindus can attest to Muslims cruelty to force conversion</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->By K.S.N. Rao
There has been in these pages a controversy concerning Islam and other religions. Adverting, however, specifically to Saad Ahmad's letter (Sept. 6), wherein he impugns papal remarks and asserts, "Islam's invitation to mankind is primarily on rational grounds and not through force," I must say nothing can be farther from truth â certainly from the point of view of India's experience.
With the advent of Islamic intrusion in the beginning of the seventh century, the glorious period of ancient India ends, and with it, the British author Arthur Basham appropriately closes the pages of his book The Wonder That was India. The medieval period of India's history, the Islamic period, is the darkest and bloodiest period with its lurid pages marked by mass murders of Hindus and other Kafirs, as the Muslim conquerors contemptuously called them.
Muslims were attracted first by ancient India's fabulous wealth and, even more strongly, by their religious zeal to damage and destroy the temples of the Hindus. By one account, they destroyed at least 20,000 temples. Even today many of the damaged temples may be seen across the length and breadth of India. Just a few examples: Sultan Mahamud of Ghazni "vowed to wage a holy war against the infidels of India" and invaded it seventeen times from 1000 to 1026 and sacked and plundered and damaged the famous temple of Somnath in Gujarat. Ala-ud-din of Khalji plundered the temples in the southern part of India. Aurangzebe, the most bigoted of the most bigoted anywhere in the world, built Jam-I-Masjid in the center of the holy city of Mathura.
As for their cruelty, there was no end. Not only did they ravage or raze to the ground some temples, but also they even erected in Delhi a monument, still standing today, with an inscription on it, which says, from how many temples its materials had been gathered. What is even more unforgivable is what Muslims did to some of the oldest and most sacred temples of Hinduism in Kashi (Benares), Ayodhya, and Mathura. They built a dome of rock adjoining the holy shrine in each place leaving only a narrow footpath on the side for pilgrims to approach the shrine. One wonders what that divine logic is that impels them to choose and establish a place as their own sacred in exactly the same place where another and much older religion had been holding it holy a thousand and more years even before the birth of Islam. How could a place in distant India, a thousand and more miles away from Mecca, become holy for them too? If anyone wants a modern example of this Islamic intolerance, they need only to look at what happened to the colossal Buddha statue in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan in March of 2001.
As for force and cruelty remorselessly used by the Muslim conquerors, here are some examples. Almost all of them (with the exception of Akbar) offered Zimma contract, which said you either become a Muslim or pay the tax called Jizya. Some of the Muslim kings did not offer even that choice. It was Islam or death. Thus, famous Sikh Gurus â Guru Nanak, Guru Arjun, and Guru Teg Bahadur â were tortured and executed. Hindu Brahmins were put to death for publicly practicing their religion. The Bahamni King Ahmad Shah massacred 20,000 people and celebrated a feast. King Babur records in his Memoirs an instance of the wholesale butchery of Hindu prisoners in front of his royal pavilion. Prithvi Raj, a Hindu prince who lost the battle, was beheaded on the battlefield. Kashmir was conquered in the 14th century, and Hindu conversion followed. The most celebrated Kashmiri, Jawaharlal Nehru, mentions in his writings how people in the 19th century desired to return to their ancestors' religion. So the Hindu king asked the Pandits (Brahmins) to reconvert them, but the Brahmins refused because there was no mechanism by which they could do that. Hinduism honestly believes that all religions are equally valid paths to the same Supreme Being, and, therefore, no one can become a Hindu except be born one.
These are some of the things that refute the claim that Islam does not force but seeks conversion through understanding and rationality. For other things, I recommend a reading of Muslim writer Ibn Warraq's book Why I am Not a Muslim (Prometheus Books, 1995).
K.S.N. Rao is an Oshkosh resident
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There has been in these pages a controversy concerning Islam and other religions. Adverting, however, specifically to Saad Ahmad's letter (Sept. 6), wherein he impugns papal remarks and asserts, "Islam's invitation to mankind is primarily on rational grounds and not through force," I must say nothing can be farther from truth â certainly from the point of view of India's experience.
With the advent of Islamic intrusion in the beginning of the seventh century, the glorious period of ancient India ends, and with it, the British author Arthur Basham appropriately closes the pages of his book The Wonder That was India. The medieval period of India's history, the Islamic period, is the darkest and bloodiest period with its lurid pages marked by mass murders of Hindus and other Kafirs, as the Muslim conquerors contemptuously called them.
Muslims were attracted first by ancient India's fabulous wealth and, even more strongly, by their religious zeal to damage and destroy the temples of the Hindus. By one account, they destroyed at least 20,000 temples. Even today many of the damaged temples may be seen across the length and breadth of India. Just a few examples: Sultan Mahamud of Ghazni "vowed to wage a holy war against the infidels of India" and invaded it seventeen times from 1000 to 1026 and sacked and plundered and damaged the famous temple of Somnath in Gujarat. Ala-ud-din of Khalji plundered the temples in the southern part of India. Aurangzebe, the most bigoted of the most bigoted anywhere in the world, built Jam-I-Masjid in the center of the holy city of Mathura.
As for their cruelty, there was no end. Not only did they ravage or raze to the ground some temples, but also they even erected in Delhi a monument, still standing today, with an inscription on it, which says, from how many temples its materials had been gathered. What is even more unforgivable is what Muslims did to some of the oldest and most sacred temples of Hinduism in Kashi (Benares), Ayodhya, and Mathura. They built a dome of rock adjoining the holy shrine in each place leaving only a narrow footpath on the side for pilgrims to approach the shrine. One wonders what that divine logic is that impels them to choose and establish a place as their own sacred in exactly the same place where another and much older religion had been holding it holy a thousand and more years even before the birth of Islam. How could a place in distant India, a thousand and more miles away from Mecca, become holy for them too? If anyone wants a modern example of this Islamic intolerance, they need only to look at what happened to the colossal Buddha statue in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan in March of 2001.
As for force and cruelty remorselessly used by the Muslim conquerors, here are some examples. Almost all of them (with the exception of Akbar) offered Zimma contract, which said you either become a Muslim or pay the tax called Jizya. Some of the Muslim kings did not offer even that choice. It was Islam or death. Thus, famous Sikh Gurus â Guru Nanak, Guru Arjun, and Guru Teg Bahadur â were tortured and executed. Hindu Brahmins were put to death for publicly practicing their religion. The Bahamni King Ahmad Shah massacred 20,000 people and celebrated a feast. King Babur records in his Memoirs an instance of the wholesale butchery of Hindu prisoners in front of his royal pavilion. Prithvi Raj, a Hindu prince who lost the battle, was beheaded on the battlefield. Kashmir was conquered in the 14th century, and Hindu conversion followed. The most celebrated Kashmiri, Jawaharlal Nehru, mentions in his writings how people in the 19th century desired to return to their ancestors' religion. So the Hindu king asked the Pandits (Brahmins) to reconvert them, but the Brahmins refused because there was no mechanism by which they could do that. Hinduism honestly believes that all religions are equally valid paths to the same Supreme Being, and, therefore, no one can become a Hindu except be born one.
These are some of the things that refute the claim that Islam does not force but seeks conversion through understanding and rationality. For other things, I recommend a reading of Muslim writer Ibn Warraq's book Why I am Not a Muslim (Prometheus Books, 1995).
K.S.N. Rao is an Oshkosh resident
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