The Previous Parts of this series can be accessed here. part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8A, part 8B, part 9, part 10, part 11. This is Part 12.

Sufism

‌Most liberals are heavily steeped in political correctness and ‘social justice warrior culture’. They conflate criticism of the ideology of Islam with criticism of Muslims as individuals and hence are afraid to offend Muslims by criticizing Islam.

Some liberals are as good as quasi-Islamists (or ‘Sharia-Bolsheviks’ in the words of the Pakistani-Canadian writer Tarek Fatah). They not only defend the ideology of Islam itself but also provide apologist and revisionist views and sometimes even justifications of the atrocities committed by the Islamic invaders. This is common not just in India but also in the West. Liberals also often resort to whataboutery (For example, liberals in India bring up the Maratha raids of Bengal while their Western counterparts bring up the crusades launched by Christian kingdoms against the Muslim world whenever the topic of Islamic atrocities is raised).

In India for instance, it is not uncommon for liberals to downplay or even completely whitewash the horrific actions of barbarians such as Ghazni, Ghori, Khilji, Babur, Tamerlane, Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan whilst claiming that such actions were not uncommon in those days. Liberals also claim these rulers should only be judged by standards prevalent in those times and not by present 21st century standards. Ironically the same ‘liberals’ are more than eager to criticise Hindu figures of adulation such as Rama & Krishna by judging them using 21st century ‘social justice warrior’ standards.

Not only have our dishonest liberals whitewashed the actions of Islamic rulers but they have even incredulously managed to portray Sufis like Chishti, Auliya, Shah Jalal and Masud as beacons of tolerance and pluralism when in reality they were nothing more than sophisticated jihadists, many of whom were even complicit in the Islamic atrocities.Many of these Sufis (Salar Masud for example) directly participated in acts of violence against the Hindus. This has been brushed aside and ignored by the Marxist historians inorder to uphold secularism and the façade of Hindu-Muslim unity that is commonly known as ‘Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb’. Such measures have resulted in a complete decimation of the truth. Due to such attitudes, these murderous and bigoted Sufis have been retrospectively glorified and have been made into saints.

The magnitude of crimes credited to Muslim monarchs by the medieval Muslim historians, was beyond measure.

The Dargahs of these Sufis have become places of worship and even many naive Hindus visit these Dargahs to offer prayers. For example, Moinuddin Chishti’s Dargah in Ajmer was built on top of the ruins of an ancient temple. Chishti is believed to have killed a cow in the temple and desecrated the shrine himself. Chishti also tormented several women in Ajmer and even celebrated the capture of Prithviraj Chauhan, the ruler of Ajmer. Today, our dishonest liberals tell us that Moinuddin Chishti was an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. Nothing can be further from the truth.

In his book ‘Hindu view of Christianity and Islam’, intellectual Ram Swarup wrote on the Sufi role in the jihad against the infidels, “The story of Islam is no different. Prophetic Islam is inimical to mystic ideas. In the beginning, some Sufis courted martyrdom, but eventually, they bought peace and safety by surrendering to Prophetic Islam. There have been some outstanding Sufis, but by arid large, the Sufi movement has been part of a larger aggressive apparatus, just like Christian Missions of Imperialism. Though Islam persecuted “infidels”, destroyed their temples, enslaved and looted them, we find no Sufis protesting. In fact. they were often beneficiaries of this vandalism. “In many cases, there is no doubt that the shrine of a Muslim saint marks the site of some local cult which was practiced on the spot long before the introduction of Islam,” says Thomas Arnold making it look quite normal and harmless. Mu’in aI-Din Chishti’s dargah at Ajmer is one such shrine built on the ruins of an old Hindu temple. The saint had also got the present of a Hindu princess, part of the booty captured by a Muslim General, Malik Khitab when he attacked the neighboring pagan land. Sufi saints often took full part in Islamic jihad.”

In his book, ‘Tipu Sultan – Villain or Hero’, intellectual S. R. Goel commented on the topic of revisionism of Islamic history in India, “We should not, therefore, confuse India’s Secularism with its namesake in the modern West. The Secularism which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru propounded and which has prospered in post-independence India, is a new concoction and should be recognized as such. We need not bother about its various definitions as put forward by its pandits. We shall do better if we have a close look at its concrete achievements.

Going by those achievements, one can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four-carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Muhammad Bin Qasim becoming a liberator of the toiling masses in Sindh; or the fact of Mahmud Ghaznavi becoming the defreezer of productive wealth hoarded in Hindu temples; or the fact of Muhammad Ghuri becoming the harbinger of an urban revolution; or the fact of Muinuddin Chishti becoming the great Indian saint; or the fact of Amir Khusru becoming the pioneer of communal amity; or the fact of Alauddin Khilji becoming the first socialist in the annals of this country; or the fact of Akbar becoming the father of Indian nationalism; or the fact of Aurangzeb becoming the benefactor of Hindu temples; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India’s freedom struggle against British imperialism or the fact of the Faraizis, the Wahabis, and the Moplahs becoming peasant revolutionaries and foremost freedom fighters?

On the Islamic invasions of India, S. R. Goel, in his book ‘The story of Islamic imperialism in India’, wrote, “The magnitude of crimes credited to Muslim monarchs by the medieval Muslim historians, was beyond measure. With a few exceptions, Muslim kings and commanders were monsters who stopped at no crime when it came to their Hindu subjects. But what strikes as more significant is the broad pattern of those crimes. The pattern is that of a jihãd in which the ghãzîs of Islam 1) invade infidel lands; 2) massacre as many infidel men, women, and children, particularly Brahmins, as they like after winning a victory; 3) capture the survivors to be sold as slaves; 4) plunder every place and person; 5) demolish idolatrous places of worship and build mosques in their places; and 6) defile idols which are flung into public squares or made into steps leading to mosques.

Still more significant is the fact that this is exactly the pattern 1) revealed by Allah in the Quran; 2) practised, perfected and prescribed by the Prophet in his own life-time; 3) followed by the pious Khalifas of Islam in the first 35 years of Islamic imperialism; 4) elaborated in the Hadis and hundreds of commentaries with meticulous attention to detail; 5) certified by the Ulama and the Sufis of Islam in all ages including our own; and 6) followed by all Muslim monarchs and chieftains who aspired for name and fame in this life, and houris and beardless boys hereafter.”

Mahmud Ghaznavi had vowed to invade India every year in order to destroy idolatry, kill the kãfirs, capture prisoners of war, and plunder vast wealth.

R. Goel further added, “One may very well ask the purveyors of this puerile propaganda that if the record of Islam in medieval India was so bright and blameless, where is the need for this daily ritual of whitewashing it. Hindu heroes like Chandragupta Maurya, Samudragupta, Harihar, Bukka, Maharana Pratap, and Shivaji, to name only a few of the notables, have never needed any face-lift. Why does the monstrous men of an Alauddin Khilji, a Firuz Shah Tughlak, a Sikandar Lodi, and an Aurangzeb, to name only the most notorious, pop out so soon from the thickest coat of cosmetics?

The answer is provided by the Muslim historians of medieval India. They painted their heroes in the indelible dyes of Islamic ideology. They did not anticipate the day when Islamic imperialism in India will become only a painful memory of the past. They did not visualise that the record of Islam in India will one day be weighed on the scales of human values. Now it is too late for trying to salvage Islam in medieval India from its blood-soaked history. The orthodox Muslim historians are honest when they state that the medieval Muslim monarchs were only carrying out the commandments of Islam when they massacred, captured, enslaved, and violated Hindu men, women and children; desecrated, demolished, and destroyed Hindu places of worship; and dispossessed the Hindus of all their wealth. The Aligarh ‘historians’ and their secularist patrons are only trying to prop up imposters in place of real and living characters who played life-size roles in history.”

R. Goel wrote, “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 KãnhaDade 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 Khilji’s invasion of Gujarat in the year 1298 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 kãfirs, capture prisoners of war, and plunder vast wealth for which India was well-known.”

“From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions.”

Indian liberals severely criticized the views of S. R. Goel and Ram Swarup, branding them Hindu nationalists and claimed that they were out to stoke hate between communities. Now let us have a look at what historians from across the world have to say on the Muslim invasions of India.

None other than the famed historian Will Durant had this to say on the Islamic conquest of India – “The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”

Fernand Braudel in his “A History of Civilizations“, said, “[the Muslims] could not rule the country, except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm – burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion, there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves.”

Alan Danielou in his book, ‘Histoire de l’Inde‘ wrote, “From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of ‘a holy war’ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races. Mahmoud Ghazni was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked.”

Note:

1. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.