The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c5.s3: Religious Wars
The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c5.s3
- Language
- English
Religious Wars
c5.s3.1
Like feudalism, inter- and intra- religious wars too were a very prominent feature of the medieval age. There were two great Semetic religions, Judaism and Christianity, already in existence when Islam was born. Most of the world religions like Vedic Hinduism (C. 2000-1500 B.C.), Judaism (C. 1500 B.C.), Zoroastrianism (C. 1000 B.C.), Jainism and Buddhism (C. 600 B.C.), Confucianism (C. 500 B.C.) and Christianity had already come into being before Islam appeared on the scene in the seventh century. All these religions, especially Hinduism, had evolved through its various schools a very highly developed philosophy. Jainism and Buddhism had said almost the last word on ethics. So that not much was left for later religions to contribute to religious philosophy and thought. So far as rituals and mythology are concerned, these abounded in all religions and the mythology of neighbouring Judaic and Christian creeds was freely incorporated by Islam in its religion, so that Moses became Musa; Jesus, Isa; Soloman, Sulaiman; Joseph, Yusuf; Jacob, Yaqub; Abraham, Ibrahim; Mary, Mariam; and so on. But to assert its own identity, rules were made suiting the requirements of Muslims imitating or forbidding Jewish and Christian practices.²⁷
c5.s3.2
Muhammad was born in Arabia in 569 and died in 632. In 622 he had to migrate from Mecca to Medina (called *hijrat*) and this year forms the first year of the Muslim calendar (*Hijri*). Islam got much of its mythology and rituals from Judaism and Christianity, but instead of coming closer to them it confronted them. From the very beginning Islam believed in aggression as an instrument of expansion, and so spreading with the rapidity of an electric current from its power-house in Mecca, it flashed into Syria, it traversed the whole breadth of north Africa; and then, leaping the Straits of Gibraltar it ran to the Gates of the Pyrenees.²⁸ Such unparalleled feats of success were one day bound to be challenged by the vanquished. As a result Christians and Muslims entered into a long-drawn struggle. The immediate cause of the conflict was the capture of Jerusalem by the Seljuq Turks in 1070 and the defeat of the Byzantine forces at Manzikart in Asia Minor in 1071. For the next two centuries (1093-1291) the Christian nations fought wars of religion or Crusades against Muslims for whom too these wars meant the holy *Jihad*.
c5.s3.3
Christianity thus found a powerful rival in Islam because the aim of both has been to convert the world to their systems. In competition, Islam had certain advantages. If because of its late arrival, there was any problem about obtaining followers, it was solved by the simple method of just forcing the people to accept it. Starting from Arabia, Islam pushed its religious and political frontiers through armed might. The chain of its early military successes helped establish its credentials and authority. It was also made more attractive than Christianity by polygamy, license of concubinage and frenzied bigotry.²⁹ It sought outward expansion but developed no true theory of peaceful co-existence. For example, it framed unlimited rules about the treatment to be accorded to non-Muslims in an Islamic state, but nowhere are there norms laid down about the behaviour of Muslims if they happen to live as a minority in a non-Muslim majority state. Its tactic of violence also proved to be its greatest weakness. In the course of Islamic history, Muslims have been found to be as eager to fight among themselves as against others.
c5.s3.4
The Crusades (so called because Christian warriors wore the sign of cross), were carried on by European nations from the end of the eleventh century till the latter half of the thirteenth century for the conquest of Palestine. The antagonism of the Christian and Muhammadan nations had been intensified by the possession of Holy Land by the Turks and their treatment of the Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem. In these wars, the pious, the adventurous, and the greedy flocked under the standards of both sides. The first crusade was inspired by Peter the Hermit in 1093, and no less than eight bloody wars were fought with great feats of adventure, heroism and killings. In the last crusade the Sultan of Egypt captured Acre in 1291 and put an end to the kingdom founded by the Crusaders. Despite their want of success, the European nations by their joint enterprises became more connected with each other and ultimately stamped out any Muslim influence in Western Europe. But the most fruitful element in the crusades was the entry of the West into the East. There was a constant conflict and permanent contact between Christianity and Islam.
c5.s3.5
In this contact both sides lost and gained by turns, both culturally and demographically, for both strove for expansion through arms and proselytization. The successors of Saladin, who defeated the Christians in the last crusade, were divided by dissensions. By the grace of those disenssions the Latins survived. A new militant Muhammadanism arose with the Mameluke Sultans of Egypt who seized the throne of Cairo in 1250. However, shortly afterwards there was a setback to Muslim power when the Caliph of Baghdad was killed by the Mongols in 1258. On the other hand, the prospect of a great mass conversion of the Mongols, which would have linked a Christian Asia to a Christian Europe and reduced Islam to a small faith, also dwindled and disappeared. The (Mongol) Khanates of Persia turned to Muhammadanism in 1316; by the middle of the fourteenth century Central Asia had gone the same way; in 1368-70 the native dynasty of Mings was on the throne and closing China to foreigners; and the end was a recession of Christianity and an extension of Islam which assumed all the greater dimensions with the growth of the power of the Ottoman Turks But a new hope dawned for the undefeated West; and this new hope was to bring one of the greatest revolutions of history. If the land was shut, why should Christianity not take to the sea? Why should it not navigate to the East, take Muhammadanism in the rear, and as it were, win Jerusalem a *tergo*? This was the thought of the great navigators, who wore the cross on their breasts and believed in all sincerity that they were labouring in the cause of the recovery of the Holy Land, and if Columbus found the Caribbean Islands instead of Cathay, at any rate we may say that the Spaniards who entered into his labours won a continent for Christianity, and that the West, in ways in which it had never dreamed, at last established the balance in its favour.³⁰
c5.s3.6
Crusades saved Western civilization in the Middle Ages. They saved it from any self-centred localism; they gave it breadth-and a vision. On the other hand, Muslim victories made Muslim vision narrow and myopic. So that today Christians are larger in numbers and technologically and militarily more advanced than Muhammadans. As these lines are being written (August 1990), their armies and ships are spreading all over the West Asian region beginning with Saudi Arabia.
c5.s3.7
To return to the medieval period. Religious wars between Christians and Muhammadans alone did not account for killings on a large scale. The Christians also fought bloody and long-drawn wars among themselves. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), for instance, decimated one-fifth population of the region affected by it. Then there was the Inquisition. Inquisition was a court or tribunal established by the Roman Catholic Church in the twelfth century for the examination and punishment of heretics. England never introduced it, Italy and France had only a taste of it. But in Spain it became firmly established towards the end of the fifteenth century. It is computed that there were in Spain above 20,000 officers of the Inquisition, called *familiars*, who served as spies and informers. Imprisonment, often for life, scourging, and the loss of property, were the punishments to which the penitent was subjected. When sentence of death was pronounced against the accused, burning the heretic in public was ordered as the church never polluted herself with blood. The number of victims of the Spanish Inquisition from 1481 to 1808 amounted to 341,021. Of these nearly 32,000 were burned at the stake.³¹
c5.s3.8
Islam outstripped Christianity in contributing to large-scale killings in wars waged for religion or persecution of heretics. Each human being has an idea or image of God in his mind. Consequently, there can be as many Gods as there are human beings. Even according to one outstanding Sufi, the paths by which its followers seek God are in number as the souls of men.³² In view of this it is presumptuous to claim that there is only one God or there are many Gods or there is no God at all. And yet in the name of One God, and at that Merciful and Compassionate, what cruelties have not been committed in the history of Islam? Arabia was converted during the life-time of Muhammad. Immediately after the death of Muhammad, to borrow the rhetoric of Edward Gibbon, in the ten years of the administration of (Caliph) Omar (634-644) the Saracens reduced to his obedience thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified fourteen hundred moschs (mosques) for the exercise of the religion of Muhammad.³³ In these unparalleled feats the number of the killed cannot be computed. Since many pages in this book will be devoted to Muslim exertions in their endeavour to spread Islam in India we may feel contented here to state that in this scenario religion and religious wars became the very soul of thought, action and oppression in the Middle Ages.