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

Islamic Imperialism in Indiadefeated and captured in his first attack. Despite his many brutal attacks on the northern borders of India,involving mass murder, enslavement, plunder and pillage, Prithviraj Chauhan forgave and honorably releasedthe aggressor without inflicting any punishment or humiliation. Within a few months, Ghauri regrouped andattacked Prithviraj again defeating the chivalrous Hindu King. 483 Muhammad Ghauri repaid Prithviraj’searlier generosity by pulling out his eyes before killing him. 484Further evidence of the contrast between the Hindu and Muslim codes of war comes fromFerishtah’s narration of Deccan Sultan Muhammad Shah’s attack against King Krishna Ray of Vijaynagarkingdom in 1366. Muhammad Shah had vowed to slaughter 100,000 infidels in the attack and ‘the massacreof the unbelievers was renewed in so relentless a manner that pregnant women and children at the breasteven did not escape the sword,’ records Ferishtah. 485 The Muslim army in a treacherous surprise-attack putKrishna Ray on the flight and 10,000 of his soldiers were slain. Muhammad Shah’s ‘thirst for vengeancebeing still unsatisfied, he commanded the inhabitants of every place around Vijaynagar to be massacred,’records Ferishtah.Krishna Ray dispatched ambassadors to make peace, which Muhammad Shah refused. Thereupon,one of the Sultan’s favorite advisor reminded him that ‘he had only sworn to slaughter one hundred thousandHindus, and not to destroy their race altogether.’ The sultan replied that ‘twice the number required by thisvow might have been slain,’ yet he was neither willing to make peace nor spare the subjects. 486 This meansthat nearly 200,000 people were slaughtered in this campaign. The ambassadors were, at length, able toconclude peace by paying a large sum of money on the spot and pleaded with the Sultan to let them speak.According to Ferishtah, ‘Being permitted to speak, they observed that no religion required the innocent to bepunished for the crimes of the guilty (kings), more especially helpless women and children: if Krishn Ray hadbeen in fault, the poor and feeble inhabitants had not been accessory to his errors. Mahomed Shah repliedthat decrees of Providence (i.e., from Allah such as in Quran 9:5 to slaughter the idolaters) had been orderedwhat had been done, and that he had no power to alter them.’ At length, the ambassadors were able to rouse ahumane sense in Muhammad Shah, as adds Ferishtah, ‘(he) took an oath that he would not, hereafter, put todeath a single enemy after a victory, and would bind his successors to observe the same line of conduct.’ 487On the contrast between the Hindu and Islamic codes of war, John Jones observes: ‘It is a curious fact that thehideous and bloody monster of religious intolerance was hardly known in India until, first the followers ofMohammed and secondly, the disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus (i.e. Portuguese), began to invade theland.’ 488 Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860), one of the greatest nineteenth-century philosophers, narrates thesordid tale of the Islamic invasion of India as follows: '...the endless persecutions, the religious wars, thatsanguinary frenzy of which the ancients (of India) had no conception! The destruction or disfigurement of theancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act still bears witness to the monotheisticfury... carried on from Mahmud, the Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aurangzeb... We hear nothing ofthis kind in the case of the Hindoo.’ 489 English novelist Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), in likening the atrocioushistory of Islam with that of later Christianity, wrote in Ends and Means:483. Dutt, KG, The Modern Face of Ang Kshetra, Tribune India, 17October 1998484. Prithviraj III, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prithviraj_Chauhan485. Ferishtah, Vol. II, p. 195486. Ibid, p. 196–97487. Ibid, p. 197488. Jones JP (1915) India - Its Life and Thought, The Macmillan Company, New York, p. 166489. Saunders TB (1997) The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Book I : Wisdom of Life, De Young Press, p. 42–43158