The Massive Transformation of India and the Middle East
by Uzay Bulut • August 11, 2023 at 5:00 am
"Since 1947... Pakistan has initiated three full-fledged wars with India.... In addition, Pakistan has consistently utilized cross-border terrorism in India as an official instrument of state policy, including the 26/11 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.... Pakistan's military and ISI spy agency also continues to support the Taliban, the Haqqani group, Lashkar-eTaiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and other affiliated militant groups in Afghanistan to undermine U.S. military operations and maintain its strategic influence there." — Hindu American Foundation, August 2019.
According to the Hindu American Foundation, "India is one of the few countries in the world where Baha'is and Jews have never faced religious persecution."
India first faced Islamist violence, dating as far back as the 8th century to the time of the Muslim Mughal invasions and rule through the mid-19th century. Countless Hindus and other non-Muslims were murdered or forcibly converted to Islam.
"[Historian Mahomed] Ferishtha lists several occasions when... sultans in central India... (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like "punishing" the Hindus.... Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate.... research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in earnest..." — Koenraad Elst, The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, September 2, 2011.
"Apart from actual killing, millions of Hindus disappeared by way of enslavement. After every conquest by a Muslim invader, slave markets in Bagdad and Samarkand were flooded with Hindus.... [O]ne cold night in the reign of Timur Lenk (1398-99), a hundred thousand Hindu slaves died [on the Hindu Kush, "Hindu-killer"] while on transport to Central Asia." — Koenraad Elst, The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, September 2, 2011.
Islamist violence against Hindus and other non-Muslims who enjoy freedom of speech is an ongoing problem.
Ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Hindu people of Kashmir was one of the occurrences that drastically changed the demographic balance in the region. Starting in 1989, more than 350,000 Kashmiri Hindus were driven from their ancestral homeland in the Jammu and Kashmir region by a radical insurgency orchestrated and funded by Pakistan.
Where are the indigenous non-Muslim communities in what is today called the "Muslim world"? Where is their presence?
Today's "Muslim world", which used to be non-Muslim before Islamic invasions, conquests and massacres, is now demographically transformed. The indigenous non-Muslim communities there are now either dying minorities or extinct.
Today, the only religion that has freedom in Afghanistan is Islam.
Turkey, the site that used to be known as Anatolia for more than a thousand years, was the seat of the Christian Byzantine Empire. For centuries, Islamic invaders attacked Anatolia; in 1453, Muslim Turks from Central Asia captured Constantinople, now Istanbul. Today, Christians comprise only 0.1 percent of Turkey's population.
Prior to the Islamic invasions, most of the entire Middle East and North Africa – countries such as Syria, Algeria, Egypt and Iraq -- used to be majority-Christian. Today, indigenous Christians and other minorities -- such as Assyrians, Yazidis and Alawites -- in almost every majority-Muslim country where they remain, are severely persecuted.
The Muslim riots or other acts of inter-religious violence in much of the Middle East, as well as Pakistan's terrorism and border disputes with India, can probably best be understood within the historical context of jihad. For centuries, jihadists have violently targeted and persecuted non-Muslims in the region. The West might do well to distinguish between destabilizing forces that create persecution, violence and refugees, and stabilizing forces, such as India that, despite their imperfections, still promote pluralism, religious freedom and security, and function as a home for all who are oppressed.
In July, violent jihad– holy war in the service of Islam – reached two groups of Hindus in South Asia. The first attack involved the destruction of the religious heritage of Hindus in Pakistan. The other attack, in India, consisted of an Islamist raid on a Hindu pilgrimage. The assault killed at least six people and injured dozens.
In the first attack, on July 16, a 150-year-old Hindu temple in Karachi was "razed to the ground." According to the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn:
"[T]he operation took place while the area was without electricity late on Friday night. That's when the diggers and a bulldozer arrived to do their work.
"The residents have also reported that they saw a police mobile there to provide 'cover' to the men operating the machines."
