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

Islamic Jihadsciences and learning had retired far away from the Muslim-occupied areas. 605 During the relatively liberalrule of Akbar, Hindus had rebuilt thousands of temples, which also acted as Hindu schools. Later onAurangzeb, having noticed that Muslim pupils also attended those temple-schools, filling their minds withsinful kuffar (un-Islamic) teachings, ordered their destruction, thereby destroying the revived Hindu educationsystem. Other Muslim rulers, such as Sultan Ahmad Shah Bahmani in the South, broke "idolatrous temples"and "destroyed the colleges of the Brahmins". 606The Muslim invaders, instead of building schools for secular education and learning, frequentlydestroyed the non-Muslim centers of learning they came across. When Caliph Omar conquered Egypt (641),the great Library of Alexandria was destroyed. 607 They burned the royal Zoroastrian library at Ctesiphon afterthe conquest Persia. Similar spectacle befell the libraries in Damascus (Syria) and Spain. In 1171, SultanSaladin destroyed the great Library of Cairo, after ousting the heretical Fatimid rulers. Destruction of librariesand universities in India has been mentioned.Muslim rulers in India built only Islamic schools, namely muktabs and madrasas, often linked tomosques, solely for training Muslim students in their religion and other crafts for administrative and militaryduty, useful for the Muslim state. Learning Arabic and Persian language and memorizing the Quran, prophetictradition and Islamic laws were the major subjects of study. Limited training was also given in agriculture,accountancy, astrology, astronomy, history, geography and mathematics, needed for running the state. 608 Thestudents of a madrasa, recorded Islamic historian and poet Allam Shibli (d. 1914), were provided with room,carpet, food, oil, pen and paper, sweets and fruits. Ibn Battutah on his travels across India sometimes stayed inmadrasas. In one madrasa of 300 rooms, he found students being taught the Quran and provided with dailyfood and yearly allowance of clothes. He found in another madrasa, where he lodged for sixteen days, that thestudents were daily served excellent foods: chicken loaves, Poloo and Korma (meat dishes) and plate ofsweets. 609 These schools were exclusive preserves for Muslim pupils; non-Muslim students had no access tothem. Muslim rulers only engaged Muslims in their administration. Educating the Hindus was, therefore,unnecessary. Most importantly, the filthy non-Muslims were not allowed to enter the perimeter of religiouspalaces, like madrasas and mosques; it remains the practice even today. Later on, when apostate Akbaropened his administration to employment of people of all creeds, he opened the door of madrasas to non-Muslim students and incorporated the study of Sanskrit and Hindu religious scriptures, such as Upanishad. 610Akbar even unbelievably tried to dispense with the study of Arabic, the language of the Prophet and theQuran, in the context that he promulgated his own new religion, Din-i-Ilahi. 611 Islamic education was nowirrelevant.605. Sachau (2002), p. 6606. Ferishtah, Vol. II, p. 248607. Some modern scholars, such as Phillip K Hitti, deny this on the ground that the Library of Alexandria could notexist because it was destroyed during the invasion of Julius Caesar in 48 BC. But, according to Theodore Vrettos(Alexandria, City of the Western Mind, The Free Press, New York, 2001, p. 93-94): ‘Caesar’s soldiers set fire to theEgyptian ships, and the flames, spreading rapidly in the driving wind, consumed most of the dockyard, manystructures near the palace, and also several thousand books that were housed in one of the buildings. From thisincident, historians mistakingly assumed that the Great Library of Alexandria had been destroyed, but the Library wasnowhere near the docks Some 40,000 book scrolls were destroyed in the fire, which were not at all connected withthe Great Library; they were account books and ledgers containing records of Alexandria’s export goods bound forRome and other cities throughout the world.’608. Ghosh, p. 22609. Ibid, p. 23610. Ibid, p. 22611. Ibid, p. 29187