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

Islamic Jihadwhich, records Ibn Asir, ‘he defeated the rebels, and made their blood flow in streams.’ 227 However,Khokhars eventually secured the assassination of Sultan Ghauri in 1206 in a war camp. Twenty Khokhars,who had lost their relations to Ghauri’s attack, entered the sultan’s tent in a daring sally and dispatched himwith daggers. 228 More than two centuries later, in Yahya bin Ahmad’s Tarikh-I Mubarak-Shahi, we comeacross one Jasrath Shaika Khokhar, who turned to be the most inveterate infidel enemy of the Muslim rulers(1420–30s).Indeed, it is often the higher caste Hindus fought on the Muslim side against the rebellious lowercaste Hindus. For example, after Aurangzeb moved his capital to the South, Jat peasants in the North rose inrebellion. They started attacking the caravans carrying merchandise, revenues and provision headed to theRoyal Court in the South. Aurangzeb sent a royal army, consisting of upper caste Rajput and Muslim soldiers,to attack and put an end to the Jat rebels. After a long siege, the fort of the Jats at Sinsani (in Rajasthan) wasstormed in January 1690, but with heavy casualties on both sides. Some 1,500 Jats lost their lives, while 200Mughals and 700 Rajputs were slain or wounded on the imperial side. 229 It is, therefore, thoroughlygroundless to claim that the lower caste Hindus happily embraced Islam to free themselves from the uppercaste Hindu oppression.The most extensive conversion to Islam has taken place amongst Buddhists. At the time of Islam’sinvasion of India, Buddhism was dominant in Northwest (today’s Pakistan, Afghanistan etc.) and Eastern(e.g., Bengal) India. Buddhism has been wiped out almost completely in both regions. In Bengal, as high as60 percent of the people had converted to Islam during the Muslim rule. An overwhelming majority of those,who retained their pre-Islamic faiths, were not Buddhist but Hindu, mostly belonging to low castes. There isno caste system or caste tyranny in Buddhism; it is, undoubtedly, more egalitarian and peaceful than Islam.What then had prompted their conversion to Islam? And why Islam failed to convert the great multitude of thelow-caste Hindus of Bengal, the ones oppressed by the upper-caste Hindu tyranny!Peaceful conversion by SufisAnother lofty claim of mythic proportion being perpetuated about conversion to Islam is that a heterodoxvariety of Muslims, namely the Sufis, had propagated Islam through peaceful missionary activity. Britishhistorian Thomas Arnold (1864–1930)—desperate to alter the centuries-old European discourse of Islam as aviolent faith—initiated this propaganda in the 1890s, which has been embraced by numerous Muslim andnon-Muslim historians and scholars. As summarized by Peter Hardy, the following instances led Arnold to hisconclusion:…in 1878, a settlement report for the Montgomery district in the Panjab quoted LieutenantElphistone as follows: ‘It [the town of Pakpattan] contains the tomb of the celebrated saint andmartyr Baba Farid, who converted a great part of the Southern Punjab to Muhammadanism, andwhose miracles entitle him to a most distinguished place among the pirs (Sufi saints) of thatreligion.’ The settlement report for the Jhang district makes similar claims for Shaykh Farid al-Din. In the Punjab Census report of 1881, Ibbeston adds the name of Bana al-Huq of Multan tothat of Baba Fraid as the two saints to whom ‘the people of western plains very generallyattribute their conversion.’ The Bombay Gazetteer for the Cutch, published in 1880, ascribes theconversion of the Cutchi Memons to witnessing the miracles of one Sayyid Yusu al-Din adescendent of Sayyid Abd al-Qadir Jilani. Elsewhere in the Bombay Presidency, SayyidMuhammad Gesu Daraz is said to have converted Hindu weavers to Islam. In the North-WesternProvinces, data in an Azamgarh settlement report, collected in 1868, included a tradition amongMuslim zaminders of the district that "the teaching of some Moslem saint" had been responsible227. Elliot & Dawson, Vol. II, p. 297–98228. Ibid, p. 233–36; Ferishtah, Vol. I, p. 105229. Lal (1995), p. 9085