Within 100 years of its birth islam had violently reached both India and Europe

Submitted by Prashant, Dec 4, 2016 at 20:24

Dear Dr Pipes, your well intentioned reader Robert from Manhattan makes many mistakes in his response to my calling ancient Muslims no different from modern Islamists. I will identify a few:

1. Robert says that Jewish prophets were also war mongers: that is irrelevant. If Robert claims that Jewish and Christian prophets were just as bad, that will not exonerate Islam.

2. Robert forgets that Islamic violent past is as old as Islam: it is a very sad fact of our collective world history. Within 90 or so years of Muhammad's death violent Islam had reached two diametrically opposite ends. In about the same year (I think it was 711 AD) on the one hand Islam reached Sindh and on the other it reached Spain. It appears as if the same authority sitting in Baghdad was coordinating conquests in both directions.

3. Robert wants to establish a rule by citing exceptions: Indeed some Muslim rulers must have been different and better than others. Some Muslim rulers surely gave better shelter to Christians and Jews and Hindus than others but none of them ever deviated from the core so much that he can be called a custodian of all religions or non-costodian of Islam. King Asoka in India lived as a Hindu but died as a buddhist. I believe at least one Mauryan king in India ruled as a hindu but died as a Jain monk. This kind of open-minded attitude about religions was a part of Indian life, it is becoming a part of all modern people (buddhist, christians, Jews, and Hindus) but it is and was absent in the Islamist/islamic life.

This is my point. Robert from Manhattan is right about Indian subcontinent people living with love and peace. But we should also engage in polite discussion of truth as we see it.

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