Page 191 - Seekers Guide Book

The Seeker’s Guide
Once the tribal communities started accepting Islam
and pledging their allegiance to the caliphs, the then
superpowers (Byzantine and Persia) felt a sense of threat
and declared war on the Muslim community. In their
defence, Muslims had to fight back.

In those days, the territory of the vanquished was merged
with the territory of the victors. But the inhabitants of the
newly merged territories were never forcefully converted
to Islam. An example of this can be seen when Umar
ibn al-Khattab (the second Muslim caliph) entered the
city of Jerusalem. The Patriarch of the city, Sophronius,
offered Umar to say his prayers in the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, but Umar declined the offer. Upon being
enquired, Umar said that he had declined so that later on
Muslims do not claim their right on the land saying that
their caliph had prayed there, and thus take away from
the Christians what was rightfully theirs. In doing so, the
caliph Umar demonstrated the Islamic teachings of well-
wishing, co-existence and peace for all mankind.

8 How did the Kashmiri freedom movement
change from being political to a

religious one?

t the time of Sheikh Abdullah, when the movement
Aof Kashmir began, it was not a religious issue. Later,
certain Muslim groups got involved and falsely gave a
religious colour to the issue and misled the public to fight
and establish a so-called Nizam-e-Mustafa (or Islamic

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