Siavash300

Through several research studies I found out It was in Eastward expansion of Islam that the principles of Jihad were put into full operation. Here there were no "people of the Book" for whom some dispensation had been given in the Koran. The key link here was the conquest of Iran in 643, a non-Arabic people. The last Persian emperor was killed in 651, but the conversion of Iran was to have grave consequences for Islam later on as it produced the first schism in Islam.

But the expansion East of Iran through Afghanistan, Kabul falling in 664, south-east into India and north-east into Central Asia and China was clearly into Kaffir territory. If some restraint was shown in the Westward expansion into Christian territory now the gloves were well and truly off. The full rigour of what the Koran has to say on Jihad and the Infidel was about to unroll in history.

The infidels in the new territories were mainly Buddhists and Hindus. The Buddhists with their pacifist philosophy offered no resistance and were the first to go. The destruction of the monasteries, the killing of the monks and the rape of nuns is well-known even though there is still no book documenting this episode in all its horror. In particular the destruction of the Buddhist universities of Taxila and Nalanda are particularly heinous crimes. The burning of the Library of Nalanda ranks with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as the two most notorious acts of vandalism in the course of Islamic expansion.

These Islamic principles were carried out in succeeding centuries in India against the Hindus. Hinduism had a military tradition, cf. Khrishna's exhortation to Arjuna to fight given in the Bhagavat Gita. But Hindu warfare lacked the fanaticism of the Muslim and theirs was not to convert subject populations. Indeed Hinduism as an ethnic religion meant that people could not come within its confines except by birth. The Hindus were able to offer some resistance but not to the extent of preventing the establishment of Muslim rule over large parts of India.

The fate of Rajasthan was typical. According to historian Gosht: "The Rajputs houses of worship were destroyed, their women raped and carried away, their children taken away as bonded labour, and all non-combatants murdered. The Rajputs soon came to know the ways of the Moslems. If it appeared that the battle could not be won, then they themselves killed their women and children, Masada style, and then went to fight the Moslems until death. In many cases the Rajput women took their own lives by taking poison and then jumping into a deep fiery pit (so that their bodies could not be desecrated)".

As with other areas under Islamic conquest sex was used not only to satisfy the carnal appetites of the conquerors but also as some sort of population policy. Ghosh writes: "The Arabs not only imposed their ruthless rule and totalitarian creed on the countries they conquered; they also populated these countries with a prolific progeny which they procreated on native women. Every Arab worth his race 'married' scores, sometimes hundreds of these helpless women after their menfolk had all been killed. Divorce of a wedded wife had been made very easy by the 'law' of Islam. A man could go on marrying and divorcing at the rate of several women during the span of a single day and night. What was more convenient, there was no restriction on the number of concubines a man could keep. The Arab conquerors used these male privileges in full measure." Ghosh sees this as the main cause why the population of territories conquered rapidly became within decades Moslem.

The most cruel treatment was reserved to the religious leaders of the Hindus who refused to convert. In 1645 the Sikh guru Tegh Bahadur was tortured for his resistance to the forcible conversion of the Hindus in Kashmir. His followers were killed before him and when this did not make him yield he was finally beheaded..