How Islam came to India and why now it needs to go from India – 1
Islam’s record in India has been always controversial. For a long time a particular reconstruction of Islam’s role in India has been pushed through because of political reasons, and by a regime dependent and supported group of official historians, whose best iconic representation is Prof. Romila Thapar, a lady of Hindu origin who completed her PhD under the obscurantist and orientalist Basham. I refer to this common paradigm of Indian history established basically through government patronization, the Thaparite Scool of Indian History. In this Thaparite paradigm of Indian history, Islam came to India through peaceful means, mainly by the peaceful efforts of traders and Sufi preachers. Further, according to this paradigm, Islam took root because of Brahmanic oppression of “lower castes” and all claims of trauma of non-Muslims at the hands of Muslims are modern reconstructions by British Imperialists and post Nehruvian “Hindu” upper caste elite.
It is not as if claims or records of trauma are not available, but they are all discounted by the Thaparite school as propaganda or myth created for various reasons. I will subsequently specifically analyze the Thaparite technique of historical interpretation and new narrative creation through her often repeated and favourite example – that of Somnath.
Let us start with textual records and then we can analyze how far these records are propaganda or myths. Note that many of these details come from sources in Persian and written down by Islamic scholars or historians, and this is the only reason given by the Thaparite School of Indian history as sufficient to discount all such “barbaric” claims as propaganda or boasting by Muslims and since they are not always supported by contemporary written records by the “victims” themselves. Similar arguments however are never allowed to be used on “Hindu” claims of “repression on lower castes”.
Enslavement of non-Muslims of India
The Chachnama describes how Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sind, enslaved many prisoners, especially women prisoners, and exported them to his homeland. Parimal and Suraj Devi, the two daughters of Raja Dahir, sent to Hajjaj for the pleasures of the Caliph, were part of a large shipment of girls remitted as one-fifth share of the state (Khums) from the booty of war (Ghanaim). After the capturing of the fort of Rawar, Muhammad bin Qasim halted there for three days and massacred 6,000 men. Their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoner. The total number of prisoners was calculated to be thirty thousand (Kalichbeg – sixty thousand), including thirty “daughters of the chiefs”. They were exported to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of prisoners were forwarded in charge of the African Slave Kaab, son of Mubarak Rasti. In Sind itself females captured after every campaign of the marching army, were enslaved and married to Arab soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. The standing instructions of Hajjaj to Muhammad bin Qasim were to “give no quarter to infidels, but to cut their throats, and take the women and children as captives”. At the end of the conquest of Sind, “when the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim” one-fifth of all the female prisoners were chosen and set aside and counted to be twenty thousand. Since they belonged to high families, “veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiers”. This implies at 100,000 non-Muslim Indian women were enslaved and distributed among the elite and the soldiers.
According to Andre Wink, from the seventh century onwards, peaking during Muhammad al-Qasim?s campaigns in 712-13, a significant number of Jats among others were captured as prisoners of war and exported to Iraq and elsewhere as slaves. Examples of prominent Jat freedmen include Abu Hanifa (699-767), the founder of the Hanafi school of Islamic law.
Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud reports that when Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked Waihind (near Peshawar) in 1001-02, he took 500,000 persons of both sexes as captive. This figure appeared so preposterous that Elliot and Dawson (the translators) reduce it to 5000. Many modern historians including the Thaparite School consistently declare that this figure is notional and therefore not true and an exaggeration. None of these discounters give any concrete reasons for reducing this claimed number – which could have easily been done among others on the basis of estimated ancient demographics of the region concerned – except their own stature as infallible and final adjudicators of truth. The common characteristic of all these narratives by Islamic chroniclers is that taking of slaves was a routine practice in every expedition and only unusually large numbers drew attention of the chroniclers. For example after Mahmud’s Ninduna (Salt Range -1014) campaign, Utbi reports that “slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap; and men of respectability in their native land[India] were degraded by becoming slaves of common shopkeepers (of Ghazni)”. He is supported by Nizamuddin Ahmad in Tabqat-i-Akbari stating that Mahmud “obtained great spoils and a large number of slaves”. Ferishtah reports that in the next campaign on Thanesar, “the Muhammadan army brought to Ghaznin 200,000 captives so that the capital appeared like an Indian city, for every soldier of the army had several slaves and slave girls”. Slaves were taken in subsequent campaigns in Baran, Mahaban, Mathura, Kanauj, Asni etc. so that when Mahmud returned to Ghazni in 1019, the booty was found to include 53,000 captives according to Nizamuddin. Utbi reports that “the number of prisoners may be conceived from the fact, that each was sold for from two to ten dirhams. These were afterwards taken to Ghazna, and the merchants came from different cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Mawaraun-Nahr, Iraq and Khurasan were filled with them”. The Tarikh-i-Alfi adds that the fifth share due to the Saiyyads was 150,000 slaves, therefore the total number of captives comes to 750,000.
It was a matter of Islamic policy to capture and convert, destroy or sell the male population, and carry into slavery women and children. Ibn-ul-Asir says that Qutbuddin Aibak made “war against the provinces of Hind. He killed many, and returned home with prisoners and booty.” Further In Benaras, Muhammad Ghori’s massacred the Hindus – “None was spared except women and children.” Fakhr-i-Mudabbir reports that as a result of the Muslim achievements under Muhammad Ghori and Qutbuddin Aibak, “even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave before became the owner of numerous slaves of all description (jauq jauq ghulam har jins)”.
The Delhi Sultan Iltutmish attacked Gwalior in 1231and “captured a large number of slaves”. Minhaj Siraj Jurjani writes that Sultan Balban’s “taking captives, and his capture of the dependents of the great Ranas cannot be recounted”. Minhaj writes that Balban’s campaign in Awadh against Trailokyavarman of the Chandela dynasty (Dalaki wa Malaki of Minhaj), “all the infidel wives, sons and dependents and children fell into the hands of the victors”. Balban captured many prisoners in his Ranthambhor campaign in1253. In 1259, attacking Haryana (in the Shiwalik Hills), he enslaved many women and children. Twice Balban led expeditions against Kampil, Patiali, and Bhojpur, and in the process captured a large number of women and children. In Katehar Balban ordered a general massacre of all males older than eight years and carried away the women and children. [ This is significant as such an order could be considered a Sunnah of Islam’s Prophet, who had either directly or through the mouth of an associate ordered a similar culling of Jewish males after the capture of Badr – this is also the famous battle where Muhammad had a Jewish leader tortured to extract treasury information and then executed – it was the beautiful widow of this executed Jew whom Muhammad selected as the concubine Rihanna who refused to convert to Islam]
Khaljis and the Tughlaqs (1290-1414 C.E.) were famous for their fondness for Hindu women and enslaving them. Alauddin Khalji is reported to have 50,000 slaves many of whom were boys, and mainly captured during war. According to Firoz Tughlaq’s order whenever a non-Muslim place was sacked, the captives should be sorted out and the best ones should be forwarded to the court. His acquisition of slaves was accomplished through various ways – capture in war, in lieu of revenue and as present from nobles. He collected 180,000 slaves. Ziyauddin Barani describes the Slave Market in Delhi, a common feature throughout Islamic India, during the reign of Alauddin Khalji, reporting that “fresh batches of captives were constantly replenishing them”. Amir Khusrau writes in the fourteenth century that “the Turks, whenever they please, can seize, buy, or sell any Hindu”. He is corroborated by Vidyapati who writes that the Muslim army commanders take into custody all the women of the enemy’s city, and wherever they happened to pass, in that very place the ladies of the Raja’s house began to be sold in the market.” Alauddin Khalji fixed the prices of such slaves in the market, as he did for all consumer items. The sale price of boys was set between 20 to 30 tankhas; (from which the modern Indian “taka” derives) with the least attractive for 7 or 8. The slave boys were classified according to their looks and working capacity. The standard price of a working girl was fixed from 5 to 12 tankahs, that of a beautiful girl from 20 to 40, and a beauty of high family from 1 thousand to 2 thousand tankahs. According to Shihabuddin al Umri, under Muhammad bin Tughlaq, a domestic maid in Delhi could be had for 8 tankhas and one deemed fit for sexual use was sold for about 15 tankahs, with prices apparently even lower in other cities. Further “The Sultan never ceases to show the greatest zeal in making war upon the infidels. Everyday thousands of slaves are sold at very low price, so great is the number of prisoners.” Ibn Battuta gives eye-witness accounts of the Sultan’s arranging marriages of enslaved girls with Muslims on a large scale on the two Ids – “First of all, daughters of Kafir (Hindu) Rajas captured during the course of the year, come, sing and dance. Thereafter they are bestowed upon Amirs and important foreigners. After this the daughters of other Kafirs dance and sing and the Sultan gives them to his brothers, relatives sons of Maliks etc. On the sixth day male and female slaves are married.”
Ibn Battuta writes: “At (one) time there arrived in Delhi some female infidel captives, ten of whom the Wazir sent to me. I gave one of them to the man who had brought them to me, but he was not satisfied. My companion took three young girls, and I do not know what happened to the rest.” Thousands (chandin hazar) of non-Muslim women (aurat va masturat) were captured during the yearly campaigns of Firoz Tughlaq and under him the Id celebrations were held on lines similar to those of his predecessor. These women were exported for sale outside of India, especially during the Hajj season, and apparently brought brought huge profits to the Muslim rulers and merchants.
The Thaparite claim that these were all propaganda by Muslims for glorification purposes is highly problematic as there exist firmans [Mughal official decrees] that try to control enslavement practices – unless such practices were so widespread that they were beginning to have disruptive effect on the fabric of the Mughal empire in its struggling early stages, the Mughlas would not have needed to issue a firman against something which according to the Thaparite school never really happened – were Akbar and Jehangir writing firmans in the haze of too much opium? Akbar, decreed abolishing the custom of enslaving helpless women and children in times of war, and Jehangir ordered that “a government collector or Jagirdar should not without permission intermarry with the people of the pargana in which he might be” for abduction and forced marriages were apparently quite common. After the Third Battle of Panipat (1761), according to the Siyar-ul-Mutakhkhirin “the plunder of the (Maratha) camp was prodigious, and women and children who survived were driven off as slaves – twenty-two thousand (women), of the highest rank in the land”.
The Thaparite school of Indian history cites Iltutmish and Balban to claim liberal and excellent treatment of slaves in Islam. The Muslim regime usually put adult male prisoners to the sword, especially the old, the overbearing and those bearing arms, (Muhammad bin Qasim’s raids, Ghori’s attack on Benaras, Balban’s attack on Katehar, Akbar’s attack on Chittor). Of the captured males, skilled workers fetch good price and were sold in India and exported to central Asia and the Arab world as the technology and skill of the Indians were well known and in great demand. A lucrative trade in Indian slaves flourished in the West Asian countries. Some modern non-Indian, and definitely not Hindu, scholars have estimated that between the eleventh to the nineteenth century, three quarters of the population of Bukhara was of mainly Indian slave extraction. The Hindu-Kush (Hindu-killer and not the Thaparite-Britannica attempt at corrupting this to Hindu-Koh, again if according to the Thaparite paradigm Hinuism never existed in Islamic or pre-Islamic times and “Hindu” culture never went beyond the Punjab why was the word associated to a range apparently not connected to India at all!) mountain ranges are so called because thousands of Indian captives “yoked together” used to die while negotiating them as described by Ibn Battuta himself.
Unsold male slaves served as domestic servants, artisans in the royal Karkhanas (a kind of “factory”) and as Paiks (an old derivation from Sanskrit “padatik”- infantry) in the army who served as a supporting wing and as human “shields” in battle. Professional soldiers captured in war and willing to serve the Muslim army, joined the infantry, and were noted for loyalty. Alauddin and Mubarak Khalji, Firoz Tughlaq were sall reported to have been saved by Paiks during assassination attempts.
Captured boys of eight/nine or younger whose family males had been executed and women enslaved and sold and scattered, were ideal candidates to be Ottoman style Janessaries. According to the price-schedule of Sultan Alauddin Khalji while the price of a handsome slave was twenty to 30 tankahs and that of a slave-servant ten to 15 tankahs, the price of a child slave (ghulam bachchgan naukari) was fixed at 70 to 80 tankahs. Therefore campaigns aimed at capturing large number of children. This perhaps encouraged, in the face of an impending defeat, Hindu mothers to burn together with their little children in the fire of Jauhar. Hindu goodlooking pre-puberty boys would also have been attractive to Muslims as potential candidates for eunuchs, needed in large numbers to manage the large harems of the Muslims, since castration could not be performed on Muslim boys.
The sexual relish with which Muslims treated women captives is revealed in Al Umri who writes “in spite of low prices of slaves, 200,000 tankahs and even more, are paid for young Indian girls. I inquired the reason and was told that these young girls are remarkable for their beauty, and the grace of their manners.” Muhammad bin Qasim sent to Hajjaj some thirty thousand captives many among whom were daughters of chiefs of Sind. Hajjaj forwarded the prisoners to Caliph Walid I (C.E. 705-15). The latter “sold some of those daughters of the chiefs, and some he granted as rewards. When he saw the daughter of Rai Dahir’s sister, he was much struck with her beauty and charms and wished to keep her for himself. But as his nephew Abdullah bin Abbas desired to take her, Walid bestowed her on him saying that it is better that you should take her to be the mother of your children”. During Jahangir’s reign, Abdullah Khan Firoz Jung declared that “I made prisoners of five lacs of men and women and sold them. They all became Muhammadans. From their progeny there will be crores by the day of judgement”. This is one of the primary motivations in Islam, – having progeny from captured women and thereby increasing Muslim population while at the same time preventing and reducing the chances of non-Muslims to reproduce.
Islamic hunger for attractive and reproductive women and their capture in military campaigns was not the only direct method for acquisition of slaves. There were many other routes to slavery devised by Islamic regimes.
The revenue system of the Delhi Sultanate was designed to enslave Hindus as these rulers, and their subordinate shiqadars, ordered their armies to abduct large numbers of Hindus as a means of extracting revenue. Communities loyal to the Sultan and regular in paying taxes were usually excused from this practice, punitive taxes were extracted from less loyal groups in the form of slaves. Thus, according to Barani, the Balban ordered his shiqadars in Awadh to enslave those people resistant to his authority, (implying those who refused to pay him tax on demand). Sultan Alauddin Khilji legalized the enslavement of those who defaulted on their revenue payments.This policy continued under the Mughals. Apart from this regular enslavement process, huge numbers of people were enslaved as a part of the Delhi Sultan’s raising of finance for their expansion into new territories. Qutbuddin Aibak invaded Gujarat in 1197 and enslaved some 20,000 people and later, he enslaved an additional 50,000 people during his conquest of Kalinjar. [ A possible Thaparite version can perhaps be obtained by treating these figures as repeated and therefore notional and therefore possibly a “0” a too many and therefore actually a “0” too many]. Levi finds reasonable K.S.Lal’s assertion that the forcible enslavement of Indians due to military expansion “gained momentum” under the Khilji and Tughluq dynasties, as being supported by available figures. Barani reports that Alauddin Khilji owned 50,000 slave-boys, in addition to 70,000 construction slaves. Firoz Shah Tughluq owned 180,000 slaves, roughly 12,000 of whom were skilled artisans. A significant proportion of slaves owned by the Sultans were likely to have been military slaves and not labourers or domestics. However earlier traditions of maintaining a mixed army comprising both Hindu soldiers and Turkic slave-soldiers (ghilman, mamluks) from Central Asia, were disrupted by the rise of the Mongols reducing the inflow of mamluks. This intensified demands by the Delhi Sultans on local Indian populations to satisfy their need for both military and domestic slaves.
Alongside Buddhist Oirats, Christian Russians, non-Sunni Afghans, and the predominantly Shia Iranians, Hindu slaves were an important component of the highly active slave markets of medieval and early modern Central Asia. Presence of Hindu slaves exported to Central Asia is shown by the 17th century records of one Juybari Sheikh, a Naqsbandi Sufi leader, (the Sufis are represented in the Thaparite school of Indian history as a very liberal, humane, tolerant and integrative interpretation of Islam – which I will investigate later from Persian sources written by the Sufis themselves ) owning over 500 slaves, forty of whom were specialists in pottery production while the others were engaged in agricultural work. High demand for skilled slaves, and India’s larger and more advanced textile industry and agricultural production, architecture, demonstrated to its neighbours that skilled labour was abundant in the subcontinent leading to enslavement and export of large number of skilled labour, following successful invasions. After sacking Delhi, Timur enslaved several thousand skilled artisans, presenting many of these slaves to his subordinate elite, although reserving the masons for use in the construction of the Bibi Khanum Mosque in Samarquand. Imported young female Hindu slaves fetched higher market price than skilled construction slaves, sometimes by 150%. Because of their identification in Muslim societies as qufirs, “non-believers”, Hindus were especially in demand in the early modern Central Asian slave markets, with Indian Hindu slaves specially mentioned in waqafnamas, and archives and even being owned by Turkic pastoral groups.
Most extensive records of the Mughal Badsha’s interest in the slave trade is available for Shah Jahan. The fact of Shah Jahan being the son of a Hindu princess, Jagat Gosain (a wife of Jehangir) and the grandson of another Hindu Rajput princess, (Jodha or not) illustrates that the Mughals pursued slave trade and enslavement of Hindus as a matter of state policy without any consideration to kinship and other consideration. In 1632 Shah Jahan ordered all recently constructed or partially-constructed Hindu temples, Christian churches obliterated. Seventy-six temples were destroyed in Benares, and Christian churches at Agra and Lahore were demolished and ten thousand inhabitants were executed by being “blown up with powder, drowned in water or burnt by fire”. As a result of this campaign, four thousand were taken captive to Agra where they were tortured to try to convert them to Islam. Only a few apostatised; the remainder were trampled to death by elephants, except for the younger women who went to ShaJahan’s harem. This is the same Shah Jahan who has to be represented according to the diktats of the Thaparite School of Indian History as only the doting father and grief-stricken love lorn husband who built the Taj Mahal (with his own labour and hard earned money it seems).
Abd Allah Khan Firuz Jang, an Uzbek noble at the Mughal court during the 1620s and 1630s, was appointed to the position of governor of the regions of Kalpi and Kher and, in the process of subjugating the local rebels, “beheaded the leaders and enslaved their women, daughters and children, who were more than 2 lacks [200,000] in number. When Shuja was appointed as governor of Kabul he carried on a ruthless war in the Hindu territory beyond Indus. Most of the women committed jauhar but those captured alive were distributed among Muslim Mansabdars. Under Shah Jahan, peasants were forced to sell their women and children to meet their revenue requirements. The peasants were carried off to various markets and fairs “to be sold with their poor unhappy wives carrying their small children crying and lamenting”. According to Qaznivi, Shah Jahan had decreed they should be sold to Muslim lords. The Augustinian missionary Fray Sebastio Manrique, who was in Bengal in 1629–30 and again in 1640, remarked on the ability of the shiqdār—a Mughal officer responsible for executive matters in the pargana, (the smallest territorial unit of imperial administration) to collect the revenue demand, by force if necessary, and even to enslave peasants should they default in their payments.
A survey of a relatively restricted sample of seventy-seven letters regarding the manumission or sale of slaves in the Majmua-i-wathaiq reveals that slaves of Indian origin (hindi al-asal) accounted for over 58 per cent of those whose region of origin is mentioned. Khutut-i-mamhura bemahr-i qadat-i Bukhara, a smaller collection of judicial documents from early eighteenth-century Bukhara includes several letters of manumission with over half of these letters referring to slaves “of Indian origin”. Even in the model of a legal letter of manumission written by the chief qazi for his assistant to follow, the example used is of a slave “of Indian origin”.
It is to be noted that sections of Indian society, such as the Ghakkar merchants, actively participated and profited from the slave trade involving Indians. Levi is of the opinion the supply of Indian slaves for export dwindled as the Mughal Empire weakened, decentralized and its military expansion came to an end. The degeneration of the Mughal empire coincided with the increasing general exclusion of slaves from the tax-revenue systems of the successor states and the growing commercial and cultural separation of India and its neighbours to the north and west under the British Raj.
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Muslim immigration needs to be ended to an non-Islamic countries.
Chris
November 25, 2008
“The character and extent of traditional Muslim tolerance should not be misunderstood. If by tolerance we mean the absence of discrimination, then the traditional Muslim state was not tolerant, and indeed a tolerance thus defined would have been seen not as a merit but as a dereliction of duty. No equality was conceded, in practice or even less in theory, between those who accepted and obeyed God’s word, and those who willfully and of their own choice rejected it. Discrimination was structural and universal, imposed by doctrine and law and enforced by popular consent….the principle has always been adopted in Muslim law and usually in practice that Christians and Jews – but not atheists, polytheists, or idolaters – are entitled to the tolerance and protection of the Muslim state.” Bernard Lewis – Islam and the West
Bernard Lewis – ISLAM AND THE WEST
“However, the principle has always been adopted in Muslim law and usually in practice that Christians and Jews – but not atheists, polytheists, or idolaters – are entitled to the tolerance and protection of the Muslim State.”
Iran:
“The Zoroastrians, seen by secular nationalists as the custodians of the true Iranian national identity, are viewed with corresponding suspicion by devout Muslims and are in any case too few to matter. The Baha’is, followers of a post-Muslim dispensation, are as such excluded from the tolerance prescribed by the Shari’a. Under the shah, they flourished and achieved a palce of some consequence in Iran. Under the republic, those who persist in their faith are proscribed outlaws.”
“For Jews and Christians, followers of religions recognized by Islamic law, this status is one of protected subordination, with some but not all of the rights of the Muslim compatriots. For those who practice nonrecognized religions, like the Baha’is in Iran, the Ahmadis in Pakistan, and the followers of African religions in the southern Sudan, the strict application of shari’a law would give them the choice between conversion and death, with the latter possibly commuted to enslavement.”
Bernard Lewis – The Multiple Identities of the Middle East – has a more in depth explanation of Dar al-Islam, Dar al-Harb, who gets to be Dhimmis and what happens to those who don’t get to be dhimmis.
“Zimmi [dhimmi}
A member of the Ahulu ‘z’Zhimmah, non-Muslim subject of a Muslim government, belonging to the Jewish, Christian, or Sabean creed, who, for the payment of a poll or capitation tax enjoys the security of his person and property in a Muhamadan country….Infidelity, however, admits of degrees. Its worst shape is idolatry, that is, the worship of idols instead of or besides the One true God; and this again is a crime most abominable on the part of Arabs, “since the Prophet was sent amongst them, and manifested himself in the midst of them, and the Quran was delivered down in their language.” Of an equally atrocious character is the infidelity of apostates, “because they have become infidels, after having been led into the way of the faith, and made acquainted with its excellence.” In the of neither, therefore is a compromise admissible; they must accept or re-embrace the faith or pay with their lives the full penalty of their crime.
With regard to the idolaters of a non-Arabic or ‘Ajam country, which latter expression in the times of early Islam, particularly applied to the Persian Empire, ash-Shafi’i maintains that destruction is incurred by them also; but the other learned doctors agree that it is lawful to reduce them to slavery, thus allowing them, as it were, a respite during which it may please God to direct them into the right path, but making, at the same time, their persons and substance subservient to the cause of Islam.
The least objectionable form of infidelity in the eyes of Muhammed and his followers, is that of the Kitabis or people of the Book (ahlu ‘lkitab), i.e. the Jews, as possessors of the Old Testament, or Taurat, and teh Christians, to whom, moreover, the Injil (Gospel) was revealed. As they are not guilty of an absolute denial, but only of a partial perversion of the truth, only part of the punishment for disbelief is their due, and it is imposed upon them in the shape of a tribute, called poll or capitation tax (jizyah), by means of which they secure protection for their property, personal freedom, and religious toleration from the Muslim government. The same privilege is extended to the Majusi or Sabeans, whose particular form of worship was more leniently judged by Muhammed and the Traditionalists than that of the idolaters of Persia.”
“Dar
A house, dwellin, habitation, land, country.”
“Daru ‘L-Islam
“Land of Islam.” According to the Raddu ‘l-Mukhtar, vol. iii, p. 391, it is a country in which the edicts of Islam are fully promulgated.
In a state brought under Muslims, all those who do not embrace the faith are placed under certain disabilities. They can worship God according to their own customs, PROVIDED THEY ARE NOT IDOLATERS; but it must be done without any ostentation, and, whilst churches and synagogues may be repaired NO NEW PLACE OF WORSHIP CAN BE ERECTED. “The construction of churches, or synagogues, in Muslim territory is unlawful, this being forbidden in the Traditions; but if places of worship belonging to Jews, or Christians, be destroyed, or fall into decay, they are at liberty to repair them, because buildings cannot endure forever.”
Idol temples must be destroyed, and idolatry suppressed by force in all countries ruled according to strict Muslim law. (Hidayah, vol. ii. p.219)”
“Daru ‘L-Harb
“The land of warfare.” According to the Dictionary Ghiyasu ‘l-Lughat, Daru ‘l-harb is “a country belonging to infidels which has not been subdued by Islam.” According to the Qamus, it is “a country in which peace has not been proclaimed between Muslims and unbelievers.”
In the Fatawa ‘Alamgiri, vol. ii. p854, it is written that a Daru ‘l-harb becomes a Daru ‘l-Islam on one condition, namely, the promulgation of the edicts of Islam. The Imam Muhammed, in his book called the Ziyadah, says a Daru ‘l-Islam becomes a Daru ‘l-harb, according to Abu Hanifah, on three conditions, namely: (1) That the edicts of the unbelievers be promulgated, and the edicts of Islam be suppressed; (2) That the country in question be adjoining a Daru ‘l-harb and no other Muslim country lie between them (that is, when the duty of Jihad or religious warfare becomes incumbent on them, and they have not the power to carry it on). (3) That no protection (aman) remains for either a Muslim of a zimmi; viz. that amanu ‘lawwal, or that first protection which was given them when the country was first conquered by Islam. The Imans Yusuf and Muhammed both say that when the edicts of unbelievers are promulgated in a country, it is sufficient to constitute it a Daru ‘l-harb.
In the Raddu ‘lMukhtar, vol. iii. p. 391, it is stated, “if the edicts of Islam remain in force, together with the edicts of the unbelievers, then the country cannot be said to be a Daru ‘l-harb….
…The Sunnis and Shi’ahs alike believe in the eventual triumph of Islam, when the whole world shall become the followers of the Prophet of Arabia; but whist the Sunnis are, of course, ready to undertake the accomplishment of this great end, “whenever there is a probability of victory to Musulmans,” the Shi’ahs, true to the one great principle of their sect, must wait until the appearance of the rightful Imam. [JIHAD]”
“Shi’ah
‘(C) With regard to the persons who may legally be slaves, there seems to be little, if any, difference between the two sects [Shi’ah and Sunni]. According to the Shi’ahs slavery is the proper condition of the HARABIS, or enemies, with the exception only of Christians, Jews, and Majusis, or fire-worshipers, so long as they continue in a state of zimmah, or subjection, to the Musulman community. If they renounce their zimmah, they fall back into the condition of ordinary HARABIS…”
Dictionary of Islam, Thomas Hughes
Observer
December 27, 2008
More on slavery
http://www.islam-watch.org/Larry/Blacks-Muslims-Should-Be-Ashamed.htm
Observer
December 27, 2008
“Muhammad left his men with instructions to take the battle against the Christians, Persians, Jews and polytheists (which came to include millions of unfortunate Hindus). For the next four centuries, Muslim armies steamrolled over unsuspecting neighbors, plundering them of loot and slaves, and forcing the survivors to either convert or pay tribute at the point of a sword.
Companions of Muhammad lived to see Islam declare war on every major religion in the world in just the first few decades following his death – pressing the Jihad against Hindus, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Buddhists.
By the time of the Crusades (when the Europeans began fighting back), Muslims had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world by sword, from Spain to Syria, and across North Africa.
Millions of Christians were enslaved by Muslims, and tens of millions of Africans. The Arab slave-trading routes would stay open for 1300 years, until pressure from Christian-based countries forced Islamic nations to declare the practice illegal (in theory). To this day, the Muslim world has never apologized to the victims of Jihad and slavery.
There is not another religion in the world that consistently produces terrorism in the name of religion as does Islam. The most dangerous Muslims are nearly always those who interpret the Qur’an most transparently. They are the fundamentalists or purists of the faith, and believe in Muhammad’s mandate to spread Islamic rule by the sword, putting to death those who will not submit.”
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Myths-of-Islam.htm
observer
December 27, 2008
“Religious minorities have not “flourished” under Islam. In fact, they have dwindled to mere shadows after centuries of persecution and discrimination. Some were converted from their native religion by brute force, others under the agonizing strain of dhimmitude.
What Muslims call “tolerance,” others correctly identify as institutionalized discrimination. The consignment of Jews and Christians to dhimmis under Islamic rule means that they are not allowed the same religious rights and freedoms as Muslims. They cannot share their faith, for example, or build houses of worship without permission.
Historically, dhimmis have often had to wear distinguishing clothing or cut their hair in a particular manner that indicates their position of inferiority and humiliation. They do not share the same legal rights as Muslims, and must even pay a poll tax (the jizya). They are to be killed or have their children taken from them if they cannot satisfy the tax collector’s requirements.
For hundreds of years, the Christian population in occupied Europe had their sons taken away and forcibly converted into Muslim warriors (known as Jannisaries) by the Ottoman Turks.
It is under this burden of discrimination and third-class status that so many converted to Islam over the centuries. Those who didn’t often faced economic and social hardships that persist to this day and are appalling by Western standards of true religious tolerance and pluralism.
For those who are not “the People of the Book,” such as Hindus and atheists, there is very little tolerance to be found once Islam establishes political superiority. The Qur’an tells Muslims to “fight in the way of Allah” until “religion is only for Allah.” The conquered populations face death if they do not establish regular prayer and charity in the Islamic tradition (ie. the pillars of Islam).
Tamerlane and other Muslim warriors slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Buddhists, as well as displacing or forcibly converting millions more over the last thousand years.
One of the great ironies of Islam is that non-Muslims are to be treated according to the very standards by which Muslim would claim the right to violent self-defense were the shoe on the other foot. Islam is its own justification. Most Muslims therefore feel no need to question the ingrained arrogance and double standards.”
“There is not the least bit of intolerance for slavery anywhere in the Qur’an. In fact, the “holy” book of Islam explicitly gives slave-owners the freedom to sexually exploit their slaves – not just in one place, but in at least four separate Suras. Islamic law is littered with rules concerning the treatment of slaves, some of which are relatively humane, but none that prohibit the actual practice by any stretch.
The very presence of these rules condones and legitimizes the institution of slavery. Adding to this is the fact that Muhammad was an avid slave trader. After providing ample evidence of his activities according to the most reliable Muslim biographers, the Center of the Study of Political Islam summarizes their findings:
Muhammad captured slaves, sold slaves, bought slaves as gifts of pleasure, received slaves as gifts, and used slaves for work. The Sira is exquisitely clear on the issue of slavery. (Muhammad and the Unbelievers: a Political Life)
As such, this deeply dehumanizing horror has been a ubiquitous tradition of Islam since the days of Muhammad to the current plight of non-Muslims in the Sudan, Mali, Niger and Mauritania, as well as other parts of the Muslim world.
There has never been an abolitionary movement within Islam (just as the religion produces no organized resistance to present-day enslavement). The abolition of slavery was imposed on the Islamic world by European countries, along with other political pressures that were entirely unrelated to Islamic law.
Although horrible abuses of slaves in the Muslim world were recorded, there has been little inclination toward the documentation and earnest contrition that one finds in the West. The absence of a guilty conscience often leads to the mistaken impression that slavery was not as bad under Islam… when it is actually indicative of the tolerance that the religion has for the practice
So narcissistic is the effect of Islam on the devoted, that to this day many Muslims believe in their hearts that the women and children carried off in battle, and their surviving men folk, were actually done a favor by the Muslim warriors who plucked them from their fields and homes and relegated them to lives of demeaning servitude.
Shame and apology, no matter how appropriate, are almost never to be found in Dar al-Islam. Caliphs, the religious equivalent of popes, maintained harems of hundreds, sometimes thousands of young girls and women captured from lands as far away as Europe and consigned to sexual slavery. Hungarians were hunted like animals by the Turks, who carried 3 million into slavery over a 150 year period.
African slaves were often castrated by their Muslim masters. Few survived to reproduce, which is why there are not many people of African descent living in the Middle East, even though more slaves were taken out of Africa in the 1300 years of Arab slave trading than in the 300 years of European slavery. The 400,000 slaves brought to America, for example, have now become a community of 30 million, with a much higher standard of living than their African peers.
There is no William Wilberforce or Bartoleme de las Casas in Islamic history as there is in Christianity. When asked to produce the name of a Muslim abolitionist, apologists sometimes meekly suggest Muhammad himself. But, if a slave owner and trader, who commanded the capture and sexual exploitation of slaves, and left a 13-century legacy of religiously-based slavery, is the best that Islam can offer, then no amount of sophistry will be enough to convince any but the most ignorant.”
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Myths-of-Islam.htm
observer
December 27, 2008
“Slavery
Muhammad was keeping slaves and made trade in them. This means that slavery is part of Islam forever. Slavery has only been abolished in Muslim countries under Western pressure. Therefore, slavery can be reinstated at any time. Islamic legislation concerning slavery is being reprinted up till today by the main schools of Islam, so that scholars are aware of it. Furthermore Islam allows female slaves and female prisoners of war to be raped on condition that well-established rules are followed.
Muhammad himself encouraged this, see the following authentic tradition/hadith transmitted by Muslim. The title of chapter 29 is already very revealing:
Sahih Muslim 8:29: “IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH A CAPTIVE WOMAN AFTER SHE IS PURIFIED (OF MENSES OR DELIVERY) IN CASE SHE HAS A HUSBAND, HER MARRIAGE IS ABROGATED AFTER SHE BECOMES CAPTIVE.”
Sahih Muslim 8:3432: “Abu Sa’id al-Khudri (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that at the Battle of Hunain Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) sent an army to Autas and encountered the enemy and fought with them. Having overcome them and taken them captives, the Companions of Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) seemed to refrain from having intercourse with captive women because of their husbands being polytheists. Then Allah, Most High, sent down regarding that:” And women already married, except those whom your right hands possess (verse 4:24)” (i.e., they were lawful for them when their ‘Idda period came to an end).”
…
3. The killing of apostates
Most Muslims and non-Muslims think this is an anomaly. They are wrong. This practice is not only in the collective memory of the population in Muslim countries, but all shariah handbooks tell the same story. Everyone who has studied Islam seriously knows that Shariah prescribes the death penalty for apostates. This is based on the authentic traditions of Muhammad who said:
“If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.” (Bukhari, Book 52, Number 260)
and
“The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.” (Bukhari, Book 83 Number 17)
In most Islamic countries the death penalty for apostasy is not applied because this is an inhumane law. In these countries however apostates are harassed administratively by all possible means or are punished in one way or another. In the so-called moderate Muslim country Malaysia they have sent a woman to a psychiatric institution and her child has been taken away from her because she had turned away from Islam and became a Hindu. Fortunately she lives in “moderate” Malaysia. If she were living in Saudi-Arabia, she would be beheaded.”
http://www.islam-watch.org/LeavingIslam/Catholic-Convert-Leaves-Islam.htm
observer
December 27, 2008
Modern day slavery…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sudan/3795607/Darfur-civilians-seized-as-slaves-by-Sudan-military.html
“Many were kidnapped as mounted gunmen from the feared Janjaweed militia swept through their villages and were then marched to military camps where they were repeatedly raped, forced to prepare food, clean fighters’ homes or work in their fields.
The report claims that others were flown across the country, where women were sold into forced marriages with soldiers and children were made to carry out domestic duties with no chance of escape.
The report, by the Darfur Consortium, a coalition of 50 African and international charities, said that the practice exactly mirrors the forced enslavement of 14,000 people from Sudan’s south during its 1983 to 2005 war with Khartoum.
As then, the government of President Omar al-Bashir has again “comprehensively failed in its duty to protect its citizens from abductions”, the report says, adding that its research showed “hundreds, but more likely thousands” of Darfuris had been abducted since the war there started in 2003.
“The government bears a direct responsibility for these violations as they have generally been carried out by government forces or militias which the government of Sudan established and supported,” said Dismas Nkunda, co-chair of the Darfur Consortium.
The report’s researchers documented the case of 16 teenage girls from Garsila in West Darfur who were kidnapped and then transported to the other side of the country and forced into marriage.
Their case only came to light when one was admitted to hospital for treatment to injuries brought on by repeated sexual assault. A lawyer took the case to court but it was thrown out because the judge ruled that the “marriage” had been “consensual”.
On another occasion, the Janjaweed abducted 14 men and seven women from a camp for people for displaced civilians.
“They used us like their wives in the night and during the day time we worked all the time – preparing food, collecting firewood and fetching water from nearby,” said one woman who managed to escape after three months.
“The men they abducted with us were used to look after their livestock. We worked all day, all week with no rest.” ”
Impact of the legacy of slavery…
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001970382_slavery02.html
“The vacationing Senegalese businessman strolling on a summer evening in a North African resort town could have forgotten he was anything but a Muslim among Muslims, an African among Africans. But a shouted insult from an Arab policeman set the black man straight: “Son of a slave.”
Along ancient Saharan trade routes, 1,300 years of shared history that have mingled the faiths, cultures and skin tones of Arabs and Africans have left another, more vicious legacy: Arab-African slavery that has endured as long as the two peoples have been together, leaving black Africans fighting perceptions of themselves as lesser beings and of Arabs as the civilizing, conquering force.
Today, the old roles are playing out at their most extreme in Sudan’s Darfur region, with murderous results: Arab horseman clutching AK-47s raze non-Arab African villages and drive off and kill the villagers, in what rights groups call an ethnic-cleansing campaign backed by Sudan’s Arab-led government.
observer
December 28, 2008
After reading above mentioned text,can someone really call me biased if I state Islam as one of the most heinous faiths cultivated on lands of humans?
I am a Hindu who is often reminded of the caste system our ancestors had been following for millenia. But does that compare any where against this. Fine, Hindus had misinterpreted teachings of our Holy Vedas and started forcification of caste by birth not work, and made a hell lot of rituals like untouchability, barring inter caste marriages and banning many privileges for the downtrodden etc. But I don’t think that anything can be as bad as the enforced slavery, forced prostitution, forced castration of boys, Forced change of faith and mass slaughtering on the basis of the division : Free Muslim, Slave Muslim, Slave Non-Muslims and Free Non-muslims.
Asky
January 18, 2009
Its overwhelming reading this facts, brutal savages. Moslems and Islam doesnt regret anything they do. To this day what is happening in Sudan is horrible. Islamic religion has to be thrown out of the world and banned.
leo hugh
March 13, 2009
Sudan Slavery Investigation by Cindy Castano
“My Slave, My Infidel”
Observer
March 20, 2009
Forced conversion and slavery
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2475
“…Although [he]acknowledges the forced conversion of pagans in Arabia, he ignores its Koranic source(s), in particular the timeless war proclamation (the Koran being the “uncreated word of Allah” for Muslims) on generic pagans (not simply Arabian pagans), Koran 9:5, which offers pagans the stark “choice” of conversion or death: “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.” . Thus for the idolatrous Hindus (and the same applies to enormous populations of pagans/animists wherever Muslim jihadist armies encountered them in history, including, sadly, contemporary Sudan) for example, enslaved in vast numbers during the waves of jihad conquests that ravaged the Indian subcontinent for well over a half millennium (beginning at the outset of the 8th century C.E.), the guiding principles of Islamic law regarding their fate —derived from Koran 9:5—were unequivocally coercive. Jihad slavery also contributed substantively to the growth of the Muslim population in India. K.S. Lal elucidates both of these points:
The Hindus who naturally resisted Muslim occupation were considered to be rebels. Besides they were idolaters (mushrik) and could not be accorded the status of Kafirs, of the People of the Book – Christians and Jews… Muslim scriptures and treatises advocated jihad against idolaters for whom the law advocated only Islam or death… The fact was that the Muslim regime was giving [them] a choice between Islam and death only. Those who were killed in battle were dead and gone; but their dependents were made slaves. They ceased to be Hindus; they were made Musalmans in course of time if not immediately after captivity…slave taking in India was the most flourishing and successful [Muslim] missionary activity…Every Sultan, as [a] champion of Islam, considered it a political necessity to plant or raise [the] Muslim population all over India for the Islamization of the country and countering native resistance.
The late Rudi Paret was a seminal 20th century scholar of the Koran, and its exegesis. Paret’s considered analysis of Koran 2:256, puts this verse in the overall context of Koranic injunctions regarding pagans, specifically, and further concludes that 2:256 is a statement of resignation, not a prohibition on forced conversion.
After the community which the Prophet had established had extended its power over the whole of Arabia, the pagan Arabs were forcefully compelled to accept Islam stated more accurately, they had to choose either to accept Islam or death in battle against the superior power of the Muslims (cf. surahs 8:12; 47:4). This regulation was later sanctioned in Islamic law. All this stands in open contradiction to the alleged meaning of the Quranic statement, noted above: la ikraha fi d-dini. The idolaters (mushrikun) were clearly compelled to accept Islam – unless they preferred to let themselves be killed. [Note-Koran 9:5];
In view of these circumstances it makes sense to consider another meaning. Perhaps originally the statement la ikraha fi d-dini did not mean that in matters of religion one ought not to use compulsion against another but that one could not use compulsion against another (through the simple proclamation of religious truth).
Lest one think such coercion applies only to “pagans”, Princeton scholar Patricia Crone makes the cogent argument that coercion may apply during any act of jihad resulting in captivity (i.e., jihad as the institution for extension of Islamic suzerainty, including, for our example, the jihad kidnapping of the two Fox reporters). Dr. Crone, in her recent analysis of the origins and development of Islamic political thought, makes an important nexus between the mass captivity and enslavement of non-Muslims during jihad campaigns, and the prominent role of coercion in these major modalities of Islamization. Following a successful jihad, she notes:
Male captives might be killed or enslaved, whatever their religious affiliation. People of the Book were not protected by Islamic law until they had accepted dhimma. Captives might also be given the choice between Islam and death, or they might pronounce the confession of faith of their own accord to avoid execution: jurists ruled that their change of status was to be accepted even though they had only converted out of fear.
An unapologetic view of Islamic history reveals that forced conversions to Islam are not exceptional—they have been the norm, across three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe—for over 13 centuries. Orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic dynasties—Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded during the jihad campaigns and rule of the Berber Almoravids and Almohads in North Africa and Spain (11th through 13th centuries), under both Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the 20th century), the Shi’ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent, beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty until the collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the British conquest of India.
Moreover, during jihad—even the jihad campaigns of the 20th century [i.e., the jihad genocide of the Armenians during World War I, the Moplah jihad in Southern India [1921], the jihad against the Assyrians of Iraq [early 1930s], the jihads against the Chinese of Indonesia and the Christian Ibo of southern Nigeria in the 1960s, and the jihad against the Christians and Animists of the southern Sudan from 1983 to 2001], the dubious concept (see Paret, above) of “no compulsion” (Koran 2:256; which was cited with tragic irony during the Fox reporters “confessional”!), has always been meaningless. A consistent practice was to enslave populations taken from outside the boundaries of the “Dar al Islam”, where Islamic rule (and Law) prevailed. Inevitably fresh non-Muslim slaves, including children (for example, the infamous devshirme system in Ottoman Turkey, which spanned three centuries and enslaved 500,000 to one million Balkan Christian adolescent males, forcibly converting them to Islam), were Islamized within a generation, their ethnic and linguistic origins erased. Two enduring and important mechanisms for this conversion were concubinage and the slave militias—practices still evident in the contemporary jihad waged by the Arab Muslim Khartoum government against the southern Sudanese Christians and Animists. And Julia Duin reported in early 2002 that murderous jihad terror campaigns—including, prominently, forced conversions to Islam—continued to be waged against the Christians of Indonesia’s Moluccan Islands….”
observer
April 9, 2009
Symposium: Convert or Die
“…The Hindus who naturally resisted Muslim occupation were considered to be rebels. Besides they were idolaters (mushrik) and could not be accorded the status of Kafirs, of the People of the Book – Christians and Jews… Muslim scriptures and treatises advocated jihad against idolaters for whom the law advocated only Islam or death… The fact was that the Muslim regime was giving [them] a choice between Islam and death only. Those who were killed in battle were dead and gone; but their dependents were made slaves. They ceased to be Hindus; they were made Musalmans in course of time if not immediately after captivity…slave taking in India was the most flourishing and successful [Muslim] missionary activity…Every Sultan, as [a] champion of Islam, considered it a political necessity to plant or raise [the] Muslim population all over India for the Islamization of the country and countering native resistance….”
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2475
Observer
April 11, 2009
still proud to be a hindu
ashish
April 18, 2009
Well this series is of great value to all the hindus . I m vry impressed with the author
Paras Mishra
April 23, 2009
thus islam has created one of the history biggest looters..
from mahamud gazni to osama binladen…
they want money and women
prasanna kumar
August 18, 2011
1. Muslim ruler shall not allow fresh constructions of Hindu temples and shrines for image worship.
2. No repairs shall be executed to the existing Hindu temples and shrines.
3. They shall not proffer Muslim names.
4. They shall not ride a harnessed horse.
5. They shall not go about with arms.
6. They shall not wear rings with diamonds.
7. They shall not deal in nor eat bacon.
8. They shall not exhibit idolatrous images.
9. They shall not build houses in the neighborhood of Muslims.
10. They shall not dispose of their dead in the neighborhood of Muslim Maqbaras nor weep nor wail loudly over their dead.
11. They shall not deal in nor buy Muslim slaves.
12. No Muslim traveler shall be refused lodgement in these temples and shrines where he shall be treated as a guest for three days by non-Muslims.
13. No non-Muslims shall act as a spy in the Muslim state.
14. No difficulty shall be offered to those non-Muslims who of their own choice show their readiness for Islam.
15. Non-Muslims shall honor Muslims and shall leave their assembly whenever the Muslims enter the premises.
16. The dress code of non-Muslims shall be different from that of Muslims to distinguish them.
http://www.factusa.org/totalexhibit/board06.htm
This is from the writing of Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani (1314-1385 CE), a tolerant Islamic Sufi spiritual leader, in “Zakhiratulmaluk”
Sufisays
June 27, 2009
Arabia was the first to encounter jihad and slavery:
The Killing of Umm Qirfa
Againstslavery
February 9, 2010
[…] Islam's record in India has been always controversial. For a long time a particular reconstruction of Islam's role in India has been pushed through because of political reasons, and by a regime dependent and supported group of official historians, whose best iconic representation is Prof. Romila Thapar, a lady of Hindu origin who completed her PhD under the obscurantist and orientalist Basham. I refer to this common paradigm of Indian history est … Read More […]
How Islam came to India and why now it needs to go from India – 1 (via Dikgaj’s Weblog) « Hindu Internet Defence Force
January 31, 2011
Congratulations and thanks for churning out such pertinent material about Islam.
prasad
March 20, 2013
Dear Dikgaj,
Great Write-up. You can enhance the quality of the essay by mentioning Pg No.; Book Name of the quotes.
Also dont include anything that cannot be substantiated independently eg you write “Examples of prominent Jat freedmen include Abu Hanifa (699-767), the founder of the Hanafi school of Islamic law.” – there should be independent references to it.
Regards,
Raman Sehgal
November 29, 2014
all Indian muslin should take Hinduism as their forefathers were Hindu .
Rajesh Sinha
November 16, 2016