Page 192 - Islam and Far Eastern Religions

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Before the radical Hindu’s oppressive policies towards the Muslim
people can be explored further, it is necessary to look at the deep-rooted

history of Islam on Indian soil.
The Indian people became acquainted with Islam at the beginning
of the 7 Century. With the Turkish invasion of India in the 11th and 12 th
th
Centuries, Islam spread rapidly across South Asia. The collapse of the
Abbasi state saw the creation of many small Muslim states. Whilst these
states continued their independent existences in Belucistan,
Afghanistan, Multan and Sind, the first large Muslim state was created

in 977 in Gazne. The state of Gazne united all the Muslim fiefdoms war-
ring with one another under one name, much as the Ottoman empire
was to do later in Anatolia. Subsequently, the Indian nation declared
war on the Muslims. After a series of clashes, the Gazne state defeated
the Indians in the Battle of Peshawar in 1008 and occupied most of North
India. Uc, Gujarat, Lahor, Delhi and Bengal were conquered by Muslim
forces. During the reign of Sultan Mahmud of Gazne, Islamic morality
and culture spread rapidly across these idolatrous lands. The native
population entered the Islamic faith in great waves, and by their own
free choice. Sultan Mahmud, who made seventeen expeditions into

India, drew the attention of the Islamic world with his relentless efforts
to spread the Islamic faith. He was honored with the title of Sultan and
his family with the title of Seref by the Abbasi Caliph. Sultan Mahmud’s
reign of thirty years helped to establish Islam in India and in a sense, he
was the founding father of the present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Between 1206 and 1526, when the Indo-Turkish empire was found-
ed, five different Muslim states ruled in India: The Memluk, The Haleci,

The Tugluk, The Seyyid and The Ludis. In 1516, Timur brought the Ludi
Empire to an end and his grandson, Babur Sah Mogul, founded his em-
th
pire which governed the area until the 17 century. This empire weak-

Islam And Far Eastern Religions