Contrasting History: To Believe or Not to Believe that is THE question...

            I am always befuddled when I examine the history of Islamic conquest.The contrasts are confounding.
            In the year 627 CE,almost nine hundred Jews of a Medinan tribe called Banu Qurayza were massacred by Muslims.The killings began early in the day and ended in torchlight.Those who escaped death were taken captive and sold at slave markets.Brutal, to say the least.
           

Caliph Umar Ibn Al-Khattab

 But then I wonder: was the Holocaust perpetuated by Muslim? Were Nuclear Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki dropped by Muslims? Think about this: When the Caliph, Umar ibn Al-Khattab,entered the Jerusalem in 638 CE, he travelled on foot out of respect for the holiness of the  site.There was neither blood nor slaughter.The Muslims signed a treaty with the patriarch.It guaranteed Christians their lives,their property and their right to worship.It was tolerance at its best for the violent times in question.
                Compare that with the fact that Muslim Ottoman forces capturing Cyprus in the sixteenth century killed Greek and Armenian Christians wantonly.Estimates of the death toll were 30,000 to 50,000.Similarly, in 1876, 12,000 men,women and children from the Bulgarian Christian community were massacred by the Sultan Abdul Hamid II.Prisoners were shot after being subjected to the most barbarous tortures.Again pitiless.

Sultan Abdul Hamid II

                   How does one reconcile this brutality with the fact that the Mughal Emperor Akbar invited poets.theologians and scholars of Christian,Hindu,Jain and Zoroastrians faiths to engage in dialogue about religion? He amassed a library of 24,000 volumes of Urdu,Persian,Greek,Latin,Arabic and Kashmiri texts.He even attempted to unite them into the faith that combined the best of each.Akbar shows me the tolerant face of Islam but that changed by the time  Aurangzeb came on the scene Aurangzeb was zealot, one who wantonly destroyed the Hindu temples (Our Constitution has the picture of Akbar but not that of the Aurangzeb).

Akbar

                   Now let's reflect on the fact that the seven centuries of Muslim rule in Spain are known as the Golden Age of Islam.I am told that the Christian and Jews held high office in the royal court.It was only when the Catholic Monarchs- Ferdinand and Isabella- retook Muslim cities that the Mosques and synagogues were burned down.There are others though who say that the Golden Age of Islam is a misnomer,and that giving equal treatment to non-Muslims were never a part of Islam.The non-believers or Dhimmi,were humiliated and made to pay the Jiziya tax.there are numerous instances of destruction of churches,synagogues and the temples during this period.

Acts of Aurangzeb to Destroy Sikhs 

                   Contrast this intolerance with the fact that the great Saladin is said to have lifted all the restrictions on Jews to live in Jerusalem in 1187 when he retook the city from the Crusaders. Those who wished to leave were guaranteed safety.Those who wished to remained were allowed to do so.Some centuries later Sultan Mehmet II officially recognised Patriarch Gennadius II as the leader of the Orthodox people living within the the Ottoman Empire.This was after the captured of Constantinople in 1453.He even bestowed the titled of Hahambasha, or the Chief Wise Man, on the Chief Rabbi of the Jews.Truly enlightened behaviour, wouldn't you say?

Sultan Mahmet

                   Compare that with grisly tale that says that in six hours of a single day in 1739, Nadir Shah massacred 30,000 men,women and children in Delhi.The plunder that he seized from Delhi was so valuable that Nadir Shah stopped collecting taxes in Persia for a period of three hundred years.How about the fact that in fourteenth-century India,the Bahamani sultans set 'targets' of 100,000 Hindu heads in the battle? Some of the most violent slaughters happened during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi, the later conquest of Mohammed Ghori, and eventual rule under the Delhi Sultanate.Ruthless 

Nadir Shah

                  Isn't it thus amazing that the Islam was the torchbearer that relayed the light of knowledge through many centuries? In fact,Europe's Renaissance and the Enlightenment were influenced by the Islamic learning.Muslim scholars made a huge contributions in the field of philosophy,astronomy,medicine,chemistry,geography,physics,optics and mathematics.It's disheartening to see today's Muslim nations are taking a step backward because their their religious leaders are adamant on pushing them back into the seventh century.And while it is true that vast majority of Muslim are not terrorists,it is equally true that that many terrorist are Muslim.

Mahmud of Ghazni destroying Indian Temples
(Invaded India 17 Times)

                  Just look around you,Uighur Muslim fighting Han Chinese in Xinjiang, Muslim Kashmiris expelling Hindu Pandits from Kashmir,Muslim fighting the Jews in Israel,the Christian in South Sudan and Catholics in East Timor.Muslim Bosniaks and Kosovars battling Orthodox Christian Serbs in the Balkans. Muslim Yoruubas fighting the Christian Ibo in Nigeria,Muslim Turks fighting the Armenians.Muslim Kurds and Arabs battling Assyrian Christians,Muslim fighting Coptic Christian in Egypt .........the list is endless.

                   I suppose the history and politics are the stories that have multiple endings.People choose whichever ending works better for their sensibilities.The novelist,George Santayana,had famously said that the history is pack of lies about the events that never happened,told by people who weren't there....So where lies the ultimate truth..????????

Part IV of Series Islam Analyzed