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

The Arab–Islamic ImperialismArabic and Arab manners, love Mecca and Arabs to acknowledge Muhammad as the Model ofBehaviour because being an Arab he loved and enforced everything that was Arabian. Stillworse, they must hate their own culture and motherland to such an extent that it becomes Dar-ul-Harb, i.e. a living battlefield.When one takes a closer look at Islamic countries across the continents, the pernicious impact of Islam on thecultural heritage of a vast number of peoples of wide religious, cultural, racial and geographical diversitybecomes easily discernable. It is remarkable to wonder at how the culture and tradition of Muslims ofBangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia and Indonesia in Asia, of Iran, Syria and Palestine in the MiddleEast, of Egypt, Sudan, Algeria and Somalia in Africa, and of Turkey and Chechnya in Europe—havingHindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Animist, Christian, Jewish and Pagan roots before the Muslim invasions—haveessentially been transformed into a quite similar Arabo-Islamic one with some variations here and there. Moreremarkable is the way their culture and outlook on life differ from the people belonging to their pre-Islamicroots living around them. This has all happened despite nearly two centuries of disruption by Europeancolonial rule in many of these countries, during which period a determined effort was made to secularize aswell as to preserve and rediscover the lost or diminished pre-Islamic socio-cultural heritage of those lands.The desire for seeing the entire globe turned Islamic in all aspects of life and society is universalamongst faithful Muslims. I have known many Muslims with high academic qualifications from Bangladesh,Pakistan, India and elsewhere living in the West. Although they would never ever think of quitting their hostsocieties for living the Islamic life of their own country or elsewhere in the Muslim world, they never hidetheir agony of living in a horribly decadent society and culture of the West. There is a burning desire amongstthem to see the Western society and culture—the economic, and to some degree, the political aspects(democracy etc.) aside—being replaced by the morally perfect Islamic ways. The increasingly popular Shariacompliantfinance amongst Muslim immigrants is likely to restructure the economic aspect of the Westernsociety, too.It should be understood that, at the time of Islam’s birth, Zoroastrian Persia, Hindu-Buddhist India,Pagan-Coptic Egypt, Pagan-Buddhist China and Christian Byzantium were the world’s finest of civilizations,all having long cultural histories and achievements in arts, architecture, education, literature and science.Islam, on the contrary, was founded in the essentially lawless Bedouin Arab Peninsula, when thesecivilizations had achieved much greater advancement than the unsophisticated Arabs. It is remarkable thatIslam has completely effaced the pre-Islamic civilizations from the great lands of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt andPalestine amongst others. Egypt is heir to the earliest and finest civilization of the ancient world, lasting 3,000years. But the Egyptian Muslims, a non-Arab people, are all now Arabs. Lamenting this degeneratingtransformation of the Egyptian society, notes Anwar Shaikh, ‘look at Egypt… This wonderful land of science,art, culture and godly manners, came down with a thud to touch its nadir when Islam took over its destiny.There are no Egyptians anymore. They all have become Arabs!’ 372What is astonishing is the way today’s pious Muslims, the descendants of those great civilizations,despise the remnants of their original heritage. The Algerian Islamist movements, for example, took up armsin the 1990s and have killed up to 200,000 of their fellow countrymen in trying to arabize their countrycompletely, to dissociate itself from its Berber African past. It should be noted here that their pre-IslamicBerber ancestors, repulsed by the Islamic invaders and their creed, had put up the staunchest resistance againstthe Arabs in Africa. According to Ibn Khaldun, the Berbers had apostatized for twelve times before the Arabinvaders could decisively impose Islam on them. The fierce Berber resistance forced the Arabs to withdrawseveral times from the Maghrib. 373372. Ibid373. Levtzion N (1979), Toward a Comparative Study of Islamization, In N. Levtzion ed., p. 6126