To Syed Kasim on winning hearts and minds

Submitted by Plato (United Arab Emirates), Jan 13, 2007 at 08:16

Syed Kasim, when will Muslims come out of the delusion that Islam is peaceful. You say:

"So, it really looks like Islam will do well when the decadent west is rolling on debt, and Islam's spiritual curve has always been up even when its technological/political/economical curves have gone up and down. It really won people's hearts and minds in the last 14 centuries by winning over people from all major faiths including Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.
Other religions lose memberships to Islam but not vice versa. It has been proved over time for 14 centuries"

How can you people say with a straight face that Islam has "really won people's hearts and minds in the last 14 centuries by winning over people from all major faiths including Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism"

What has been been proven over 14 centuries is that Islam is violent and is hungry for converts. Where is the great Bhuddhist culture of Gandhara, the Hindu civilisation of Sindh. If centuries ago these people converted seeing the shining light of Islam and not the glinting sword then why today, with TV, radio and other means of communication the Hindus of India are not falling over themselves to enter the "pure" religion of Islam.:

The Muslims even in the twentieth century destroyed the last symbolic vestiges of Afghanistan's Buddhist past when they reduced the Bamiyan statues to rubble. There was hardly any cry of outrage from the muslim world as we saw in the case of those ridiculous cartoons. The Buddhists of the world did not even blink an eye.They did not curse or scream abuse at Muslims as is commonplace in the Islamic world at the slightest real and mostly imagined slights to their religion and its symbols. As Jesus said the "meek shall inherit the earth". That is what is happening Mr. Salman because the world is waking up to 14 centuries of Islam's depredations. Faster population growth is not going to help as even your children will wake up to the world of the internet, mobile phones, tv coverage. Distorted history and religious brainwashing can only do so much. Membership can also be illusional if not delusional. Think about the membership of the Communist Party of the old Soviet Union.

Read some proper history, for instance what Will Durant had to say about what happened in India:India before the advent of Islamic imperialism was not exactly a zone of peace. There were plenty of wars fought by Hindu princes. But in all their wars, the Hindus had observed some time-honoured conventions sanctioned by the Sastras. The Brahmins and the Bhikshus were never molested. The cows were never killed. The temples were never touched. The chastity of women was never violated. The non-combatants were never killed or captured. A human habitation was never attacked unless it was a fort. The civil population was never plundered. War booty was an unknown item in the calculations of conquerors. The martial classes who clashed, mostly in open spaces, had a code of honor. Sacrifice of honor for victory or material gain was deemed as worse than death.

Islamic imperialism came with a different code--the Sunnah of the Prophet. It required its warriors to fall upon the helpless civil population after a decisive victory had been won on the battlefield. It required them to sack and burn down villages and towns after the defenders had died fighting or had fled. The cows, the Brahmins, and the Bhikshus invited their special attention in mass murders of non-combatants. The temples and monasteries were their special targets in an orgy of pillage and arson. Those whom they did not kill, they captured and sold as slaves. The magnitude of the booty looted even from the bodies of the dead, was a measure of the success of a military mission. And they did all this as mujahids (holy warriors) and ghazls (kafir-killers) in the service of Allah and his Last Prophet.

Hindus found it very hard to understand the psychology of this new invader. For the first time in their history, Hindus were witnessing a scene which was described by Kanhadade Prabandha (1456 AD) in the following words:

"The conquering army burnt villages, devastated the land, plundered people's wealth, took Brahmins and children and women of all classes captive, flogged with thongs of raw hide, carried a moving prison with it, and converted the prisoners into obsequious Turks."

That was written in remembrance of Alauddin Khalji's invasion of Gujarat in the year l298 AD. But the gruesome game had started three centuries earlier when Mahmud Ghaznavi had vowed to invade India every year in order to destroy idolatry, kill the kafirs, capture prisoners of war, and plunder vast wealth for which India was well-known.Peace be upon the one who follows the right path! I call you to Islam. Accept my call, and you shall be unharmed. I am God's Messenger to mankind, and the word shall be carried out upon the miscreants. If, therefore, you recognize Islam, I shall bestow power upon you. But if you refuse to accept Islam, your power shall vanish, my horses shall camp on the expanse of your territory and my prophecy shall prevail in your kingdom."

This is Maududi's, a respected Islamic commentator of the twentieth century, comment on verse 9:12In order to enable the Muslims to extend the influence of Islam outside Arabia, they were enjoined to crush with sword the non- Muslim powers and to force them to accept the sovereignty of the Islamic State. As the great Roman and Iranian Empires were the biggest hindrances in the way, a conflict with them was inevitable

Note carefully his statement about coming generations. It means coming generations will not be allowed to practice their forefathers religions under Islamic rule.

Now Mr. Salman look yourself in the mirror and tell your reflection that Buddhists, Hindus and Pagans joyfully accepted Islam. How can you claim to have a religion which is better than say Buddhism which is a religion of complete tolerance and imbued with the spirit of free enquiry whereas Islam closes all such avenues by insisting on pain of death that you must believe in a god that abuses unbelievers calling them unclean, pigs and apes and other violent imprecations and throws terror into their hearts.

To quote a Buddhist: In the name of Buddha no sacred place was reddened with the blood of innocents, no sincere thinkers were burnt alive, and there was no merciless roasting of heretics. Mr. Salman tell me with a straight face that Islam did not indulge in these atrocities. Salman do you want to do a compare and contrast study with this unashamedly atheistic religion and see how your religion comes out in the moral and ethical standards that were set by the two?

This is your Prophet's letter to the Julanda Brothers in far away Oman:

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".