Historical Perspectives on Islamic Conversions in India

[redray]

A legacy of Mughal conquest and rule in India was the forced conversions of people to Islam.

Impatient of delay, Muslim invaders, conquerors and kings openly and unscrupulously converted people to Islam by force. Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sind in C.E. 712. Whatever place he captured like Alor, Nirun, Debal, Sawandari, Kiraj, and Multan, therein he forcibly converted people to Islam.

Mahmud Ghaznavi invaded Hindustan seventeen times, and every time he came he converted people from Peshawar to Mathura and Kashmir to Somnath. The exploits of Mahmud Ghaznavi in the field of forced proselytization were cherished for long. His example was presented as the model before all good Muslim rulers, as early as the fourteenth century by Ziyauddin Barani in his Fatawa-i-Jahandari and as late as the close of the eighteenth century by Muhammad Aslam in his Farhat-un-Nazirin. There were forcible conversion both during war and in peace. Sikandar Butshikan in Kashmir to Tipu Sultan in Mysore, Mahmud Beghara in Gujarat to Jalaluddin Muhammad in Bengal, all Muslim rulers carried on large-scale forcible conversions through jihad.

In addition to forced conversion, the Muslim invaders also embarked on a policy of desecrating and razing temples and shrines and, in some cases, building mosques in their place. Women were also carried away and forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslims.

This caused the Sikhs to rise up against the fanatical policies of the Mughal rulers. There was also a prolonged period of oppression that included the mass murder of Sikh men, women and children who refused to embrace Islam, particularyla the persecution perpetrated by the Governor of Lahore, Mir Mannu, from 1752 AD onward. Mir Mannu tortured Sikh women in order to force them to abandon their religion. He ordered the children and babies of imprisoned Sikh women to be speared alive, or cut up into pieces and made into necklaces to be put around the mother's neck! He also set a price for the severed head of a Sikh - Rs. 80 (equivalent to one year's pay).

All this and more happened not thousands of years ago, but only a couple of hundred years ago. This horrific history remains clearly etched in the collective minds of Sikhs everywhere. Today, when unscrupulous methods are used to persuade Sikh youth into Islam, the events of history surge back to mind. If left unchecked, the growing tensions between the two communities has the potential to once again result in unrest and violence.

This is why Islam is not a faith and lack inherant spirtuality;

"As long as man divides his world into friends and enemies (love and hate),

He'll remain separated from God;

As long as man discriminates between himself and others,

There'll remain a distance between him and God !"

- Guru Arjan Dev Ji (Sikh guru)
_________________
Until Lions tell their own history, history will always glorify the hunters‘.