Journey to Jerusalem: Conquest Upon Conquest

My last Journey to Jerusalem article was partly focused on reflecting on events surrounding the year 712 AD and the conquest of SIndh by the Arabs. Before that, I also wrote about why the Dome of Rock is a misplaced monument and that it should not have been built. I have been thinking about this article for a long time, but I could not write it due to certain obligations. My theme is to write about the conquest of India by Muslim invaders over the past thirteen hundred years. This is a critical topic that I believe must be understood by Muslims, Indians, and the rest of the world too. The reason is that most of the things are misunderstood by most human communities, and that confusion can be misleading.

By the way, Arabs invaded India only once. As I wrote earlier, this happened in 712 AD. I also wrote that Walid bin Abdul Malik ordered this invasion to persecute the fleeing daughter of Imam Ali bin Abi Taalib (RA). This is extremely important to understand. Most Muslims consider Sindh as the door of Islam to India, as Islam arrived here through this invasion. However, the truth is that Walid belonged to a murderous clan that was against the family of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself. Rest of the story can be found in my previous article.

After this eighth century attack of Arabs on India from the Arabian sea till the end of the tenth century, there was a lull of Muslim attacks. By the beginning of the eleventh century, the famous battle of Peshawar happened between Indians and Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. An interesting aspect about this person is that he is a very controversial person in Pakistan. Many consider him as a hero. However, among the highly educated echelons of Pakistan, he is considered as a plunderer. When I was a child I read about some literature about him in which he was taken in a very high esteem. In my point of view the truth of the established history is that his father was provoked by the Maharaja Jayapala of North India who had started becoming insecure of the growing power of Sabuktigin in Ghazni. By preemptively attacking him the Raja literally stirred the hornet’s nest so much so that the severity of the retaliatory invasions led him to commit suicide. On a personal level, I only consider this man to be a justifiable conqueror of India. After all, this was the protocol of medieval times; you provoke someone and then it really depends if you can sustain the retaliation or not. I think that this is a timeless law of nature. Sabuktigin was a slave who had elevated to the status of a ruler. He was of Turkic origin.

After this came the turn of the Ghauris, who are much despised in India to this day. Ghauris originated from somewhere in Persia. They were literally nomadic people who had converted to Islam at some stage. Initially, they advanced to Ghazni and sacked the Ghaznavi sultanate. They torched Kabul and the city literally burned for seven days and seven nights. Later on they marched to Delhi, conquered it and made it their capital. I personally find it very problematic to defend this invasion. Delhi sulatane was formed at this time. This was followed by the slave dynasty’s rule in northern India. Mostly these rulers were of either Persian or Turkic origins.

Later on came the era of two very famous expansionist imperialists. One of them was Genghis Khan. He remains a famous person to this day. I read an article on geopolitics a few years ago in which it was stated that one in every eighth person in Asia happens to be his descendant. His name needs no mention. And his barbarity needs no advertisement. His reputation has always remained two steps ahead of him to this day. He belonged to Mangolia.

The second was Tamerlane. He is also a very famous warrior. He was was Turkicized Mongol who also descended from an extremely ferocious general of Genghis Khan. Legend has it that he was a memorizer of the Holy Quran too. From an early age he had a personal ambition to conquer the world. He plundered Asia multiple times from the East to the West of Asia. In the East he clashed with the Delhi Sultanate and in the West with the Ottoman empire. He was driven by an ambition to conquer the world. After him the Delhi sultanate was restored in India. His cruelty, barbarity, and brutality were second only to Genghis Khan.

Then came the famous king Babur who set the stage for the Mughal empire in India. He was a descendant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan from his father’s and mother’s sides, respectively. He was surely a Mongol, and hence the name Mughal. In the name of God he clashed with Ibrahim Lodhi, the last Sultan of the Delhi Sultanate. As a matter of fact, he mustered support from Gujjars, a scheduled caste of the Indian subcontinent, of Sohawa (a town now in Northern Punjab in Pakistan). He made a fiery religious speech to them before he attacked Delhi. It is needless to mention that Ibrahim was already a Muslim.

Babur’s son Humayun became the king after the demise of his father. He was later overthrown by Sher Shah Suri in the name of God. And eventually, Sher Shah was overthrown by Akbar in the name of God, too. Akbar lived to become one of the greatest emperors in human history. He ruled India for over fifty years. Among the many good things he did for India, he did so many bad things too, including introducing a new religion which was a mixture of Hinduism and Islam. It is highly forbidden in Islam to make innovations in the religion of God. However, Akbar was largely inspired by his desire to rule. After Akbar, his son Jehangir came to the throne. He was followed by his son Shahjehan, who is also the founder of the famous Taj Mahal.

Shahjehan’s son Aurangzeb incarcerated his father and had his elder brother Dara Shikoh assassinated. Daara was the heir apparent to the throne. Aurangzeb ruled India for another fifty years too. But by the end of his tenure, the Mughal empire was already in decline. There were a few more Mughal kings and then the British took over India and colonized it for around ninety years. This brought an end to the conquests of Muslims in India.

Reading this tale of plunder and murders, one should wonder that what was wrong with each of the murdered kings (who were also Muslim) that the murderer killed him or put him in the jail in the name of God. What were their differences that they could not decide through dialogue or diplomacy? And why should they have fought with each other due to personal differences, as a Muslim person is not supposed to live a life for personal goals and ambitions but as a duty to God. I am leaving the Hindu inhabitants of India aside for a moment. I am talking about the nature of conflicts between the Muslim warriors only.

This is a well-known story of the conquests of Muslim warriors in India. They were killing each other in the name of God. And they were doing these excursions in somebody else’s country. This is what the normal Muslims do not understand. This is what they must appreciate. And this is why I have written this article.

No matter what the beliefs of Indian people, and no matter how inhumane or inhygienic their rituals, the truth is that India is the country of the Indian people. Moreover, India is not mentioned anywhere in the Holy Quran, let alone its conquests. India was also a friendly country towards emigrants. Once upon a time, Jews and Christians had migrated to India. Later on, persecuted Muslims, especially from the progeny of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and his household, had moved to India. Normally, it was people fleeing from their hostile origins who would come to India. Imam Hussain was considering moving to India. Imam Hussain was married to a Persian princess whose sister was married to an a prince of an Indian state. Indians were happy to host Imam Hussain (RA).

Moreover, Islam was already becoming comfortable in India due to the advent of Sufi saints. As early as the eleventh century, famous Sufi saints had started settling in India. Sufis would come alone to India, without any armies or armaments. They would start living in India like common people. Their conduct and behavior was sufficient to motivate Indians to convert to Islam. Around half a million Rajputs are considered to have converted to Islam due to the peaceful company of Hazrat Baha ud Din Zakariya (RA). Khawaja Ghulam Mohi ud Din Chishti (RA) settled in Ajmer, that was the traditional house of Rajputs, the foremost warrior class of India.

The message of the sufis was always love of God and the love of humanity. There is a central concept in Islam that a person owes two types of rights. One is the rights of God. The other type is the rights of human beings. It is said that God can forgive the rights of Himself, but not of human beings. And the rights of human beings revolve around care and compassion, not subjugation and murder.

Conquests were not only not required, they were quite evil. They have had a very negative effect on the Indian psyche. It does not matter that India is a racist society, or that all Indian people are not equal, or that it was already an occupation of Indo-Aryan over Dalits. These are widespread notions that can be found in common chit chat to academic literature. But it does not matter. The real ingredient required to mold human hearts is love. With love humans can be molded to good. Subjugation was a bad idea.

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Journey to Jerusalem: Conquest Upon Conquest by Psyops Prime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.