Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India c3.3

c3.3

Now fifty years after my first brochure on the subject, I present before the scholars my latest book entitled *The Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India*. Its raison desire is that in my earlier endeavours, no attempt had been made to trace the relationship between the injunctions contained in Islamic religious literature and the attitudes and actions of Muslim kings and conquerors. Ordinarily, historians writing on medieval Indian history refer to Muslim chronicles and histories as their only source materials. The study of Islamic scriptural literature like the Quran, the Hadis, the Biographies of the Prophet and the Shariat is ignored in historical studies as it is considered to belong to the domain of religion rather than to that of history. However, the study of this literature reveals that Muslim invaders and rulers were not cruel or fanatical by themselves as such, but they became so by pursuing the malevolent ideology as projected in the Quran and the Hadis against the non-Muslims. That is why the study of the 'moral and spiritual' literature of Islam becomes so important for the study of its history also.