Kashmir Quotes

Lopez and Elizer were Jews who had escaped the persecution in Portugal to come to America. They and other non-Christians could live and work in Rhode Island but could not vote or hold public office by a previous decision of the Rhode Island Assembly. See {619707}.The Jews had petitioned for their civil rights.

This sura has unfortunately been used by some Serbians and other Christians to justify ethnic cleansing against Muslims.

The problem was that the British had adopted an Indian Civil Service system and instituted an educational system to train Indians. The Hindus attended the schools and did very well on the examinations. The Muslims, however, resisted the secular education, and most of their young men could not pass the examinations. See {616924} & {616925}.

The Guru was then horribly tortured, and when he still would not convert, the Emperor had him beheaded. A new Indian Emperor, Aurangzeb, had ascended the throne of India by imprisoning his father and murdering his brothers. All the Emperors in those days were Muslims ever since the Islamic army had left Arabia and conquered most land to the East including most of India. Aurangzeb was worse than most and claimed he had a vision from God telling him that he should make everyone in the kingdom a Muslim. But about half the population was still Hindu. He decided to get the Sikh Guru to convert and then almost all would follow. The Sikhs were considered a Hindu sect at the time, and the Sikh Guru was respected by most Hindus. When the Emperor sent for the Guru, he explained that India should only have one religion, Islam, and offered the Guru much gold to convert, but if he did not do so, it would go badly for him. The Guru asked that a large pile of peppercorns be brought before them, and had it set on fire. When the fire burned out, the Guru went through the ashes and found three peppercorns intact.

Under his leadership most of the Muslims did not accept such a constitution. Partition ensued and with it came the deaths of tens of millions of Indians but Pakistan and Bangladesh were formed. Ironically, there are now about 200 million Muslims in India living under a “Hindu Majority Government” –more than in any country except Indonesia. Few Indian Muslims leave India for Pakistan today.

Head of the Sikh Religion. His teaching was that deeds determined the man, not the professed belief and that the existing religions turned man against man.

Arguments against the Partition of India at the time centered around the poor economic viability of a separate Muslim state. However Iqbal and others placed the cultural issues in the forefront. They eventually prevailed.

Jinnah who at later years of his life became a rabid leader and facilitator of religious bigotry and violent Jihad, was totally opposed to mixing religion in politics. His view was so strong on this point that he even criticized Gandhi for mixing religion with politics when he was a sing star of the Indian Congress Party. Jinnah's flip flop on this point led to one of the great massacres and tragedies in human history.

The fear of the Sikhs was that if the Punjab became a part of the new Muslim State of Pakistan, they would not be allowed to practice their religion and that the new Islamic state would discriminate against non-Muslims. They were successful in keeping the Punjab as a part of India, and turned out to have been right about the intolerance of the new Muslim state.

Magh Bahul Ekadashi. To this day Golwalker is one of the most revered of the Hindu nationalists. This is the kind of intolerance that Indian Muslims faced amongst the most extreme Hindu’s. The possibility that this would become a reality was one of the great motivators for partition of India on the part of the Muslims. The irony is that the Muslim nation that was created—Pakistan—follows this doctrine exactly, only they substitute Islam for the Hindu culture. With the exception of a few Muslim nations, most of Islam follows the intolerance that the Hindu extremists would have followed. Ironically, “Hindu” India still has many millions of Muslims and they are given full citizenship and more democratic freedom and rights than Muslims have in almost all Islamic countries with the exception of Turkey.

Smith was the first Catholic to run for the Presidency. There were many who opposed him who were anti-Catholic bigots. Were it not for this religious discrimination Smith would almost certainly have been President.

Ethnic cleansing was a basic component of early Islam. The contemporary seeming hysteria over American troops in Arab nations, has in addition to the usual problems of soldiers from another land this background. The same is true about the presence of Israel. From some points of view, the presence of Christians and Jew in the Middle East is wrong per se because it undermines the work and intention of the Prophet.

This was the an early history of the brutal 1298 Muslim Invasion of Gujarat a large state of India that was then Hindu. The Islamic Armies spread out from the Middle East and converted a large proportion of the worlds people to Islam. Force or “conversion by the sword” was one of the tools, but millions of people welcomed Islam and saw it as a great modernizing force for the dignity and equality of people—especially in Hindu India where the caste system made all inferior to the Brahmins and the lowest cast literally “untouchables.”

See {617160} for a similar legal opinion. The concern was that poor Muslims may desert their faith when they see how well-dressed the tolerated people, Christians and Jews, are. They might conclude that Christianity or Judaism is better at making people wealthy than was Islam. See {617162} for a Koranic support of the idea. The Western view of this is generally, that is what the marketplace of ideas is all about. In 21st century America, Jews and Mormons on the average were the wealthiest religious groups. The logic of al-Ramli is that Mormons and Jews—each only 6 percent of the population—should not be allowed to show their wealth, lest Roman Catholics for example—25 percent of the population—will convert from Catholicism to the other two religions. From a democratic point of view, the response should be, we so be it. That is their choice. But America is the living proof that the assumption of conversion and loss of faith is per se wrong. The Mormons and Jews are visibly more successful, yet there are very few Roman Catholics leaving their church and converting to the two wealthier religions. There are some, but not at any greater rate than people convert from “wealthier” religions.

He was arguing to reserve some states as Muslim states by designation. 7 years later he would insist on a separate homeland. India was partitioned and Pakistan and Bangladesh resulted but at a fearful cost of tens of millions of lives.

Head of the Sikh Religion

Two hundred years earlier, in Spain, the Christians had similar laws discriminating against Jews whose synagogues had to be smaller and shorter than any Christian church.

The Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians were allowed to maintain their own religion and live as 2nd class citizens and pay a special tax, but ALL other religions were to be forced to convert.