islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery

Islamic Jihadbecame Buddhists; in Central Asia they became Muslims; perhaps some in Russia and Hungary becameChristians.’ 367 But the Islamic conquerors acted on destroying the culture of the conquered infidels because ofthe fundamental Muslim belief that the vestiges of the pre-Islamic jahiliyah age must be replaced by theperfect religious, political and cultural civilization of Islam. From India to Spain, the destruction of countlessnumbers of Pagan temples, Buddhist monasteries, Christian churches, Jewish synagogues, and so on bearstestimony of the widespread destruction of non-Islamic cultures by Muslim invaders. The Islamic conquests,therefore, came at "extraordinary cultural costs", 368 which remains thoroughly unacknowledged. Instead, theMuslim invaders, surprisingly, have been widely credited with enriching the civilizations of the conquered. Incomparing and contrasting the impact of European and Arab (Islamic) rules on the cultural and civilizationalaspects of the ruled, Ibn Warraq laments:Although Europeans are constantly being castigated for having imposed their insidious anddecadent values, cultures and language on the Third World, no one cares to point out that Islamcolonized lands that were the home of advanced and ancient civilizations, and that in doing so,Islamic colonialism trampled under foot and permanently destroyed many cultures. 369Therefore, apart from the purpose of economic exploitation and political domination, the Islamic invaders alsocame with an over-riding mission of cultural imperialism. Islam comes with the mantra that ProphetMuhammad was the greatest and the perfect example of human life; Muslims must try to emulate his life,actions and deeds in every detail possible. Muhammad, being an Arab and fountainhead of the Islamiccreed—a non-Arab person, by embracing Islam, ideally seeks to mimic the life of Muhammad, an Arabo-Islamic overlord. It becomes his life-long mission to become an Arab in lifestyle and Islamic in religiousbelief, forgoing his own cultural and civilizational values, precepts, and practices. Sir VS Naipaul met oneMr. Jaffrey—a British educated Journalist, living in Tehran. Born and educated in Lukhnow (India), Mr.Jaffrey, a Shiite Muslim, had grown up with the dream of "jame towhidi, the society of the believers", a dreamof re-creating the culture and society of the earliest days of Islam, founded by Prophet Muhammad in Medina.In his dream of living such a life, he quit Hindu-dominated India in 1948 for Pakistan. Not satisfied with theSunni Muslim society and its treatment of Shiites, he moved to Shiite Iran, where he worked in the Englishlanguagedaily, Tehran Times. He was disappointed again, because ‘Iran under the Shah was a tyranny, andthe great wealth when it came led to corruption and sodomy and general wickedness.’ 370 Then there came theIslamic revolution, something Mr. Jaffrey could be delighted about. Iran under the Ayatollahs, ruling as thespiritual and political sovereign in the fashion of the Prophet, was closest to the jame towhidi Mr. Jaffrey hadbeen dreaming for. Such a dream is rather universal amongst pious Muslims, the so-called fundamentalists,everywhere, the West included.Behind Mr. Jaffrey’s story lies a very fundamental Muslim urge: that is, how far a Muslim, highlytrained in Western secular education, is willing to go in order to live an Arabo-Islamic religious, social,cultural and political life, forgoing his ancestral culture and tradition. Of the Arab cultural hegemony imposedby Islam on the conquered and converted peoples, Anwar Shaikh writes: 371…it becomes the duty of all converts to Islam that they must accept the Arab cultural hegemony,that is, subordinate all their national institutions to those of Arabia, adopt Islamic law, learn367. Nehru J (1989) Glimpses of World History, Oxford University Press, Delhi, p. 222368. Crone P & Cook M (1977) Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,p. VIII369. Ibn Warraq, p. 198370. Naipaul VS (1998) Beyond Belief: The Islamic Incursions among the Converted Peoples, Random House, NewYork, p. 144–45371. Shaikh A (1998) Islam: The Arab Imperialism, The Principality Publishers, Cardiff, Chapter 7125