- This can happen as government policy or as a matter of riots.
- Summary: Muhammad’s example as *the ideal muslim* has motivated murderers and pillagers throughout the ages, including in my country. Like early christians who burnt down the library of Alexandria, they destroyed the great universities of naLandA and vikramashIlA, the temples they razed are too numerous to count - zarathruShTa’s favorite tree, the sphynxes nose, tombs of Timbuktu, buddha-s of bAmiyAn being well known examples in the wider world.
Iconoclasm
Limited digestion of polytheism and icon worship
Sufi and shia dargah-s provide for some limited outlet for polytheistic and iconophilic tendencies.
Destruction of centers of learning.
Destruction
- “The Moslem scientist Al-Biruni himself informs us that in the major cities of Khwarizm, Qutayba demolished huge libraries and burnt their numerous Indic and Iranic texts. Al-Biruni also mentions that he systematically killed all the Indic and Iranian scholars who manned those libraries.” [M]
- “Every historian and archaeologist of that period knows that the vast Buddhist and Jain establishments at Bukhara, Samarkand, Khotan, Balkh, Bamian, Begram, Jalalabad, Peshawar, Takshasila, Mirpur-Khas, Nagar-Parkar, Sringar, Sialkot, Agroha, Mathura, Hastinapur, Kanauj, Sravasti, Ayodhya, Sarnath, Nalanda, Vikramsila, Vaishali, Rajgir, Odantpuri, Bharhut, Paharpur, Jagaddala, Jajnagar, Nagarjunikonda, Amaravati, Kanchi, Dwarasamudra, Bharuch Valabhi, Palitana, Girnar, Patan, Jalor, Chandrawati, Bhinmal, Didwana, Nagaur, Osian, Bairat, Gwalior and Mandu were destroyed by the swordsmen of Islam.” [SG]
- In India the great universities at Nalanda and Vikramashila were destroyed; schools in Kashi, Multan and Thatta were suppressed.
Importance of universities
- Claim: “Universities were nice things but not essential to Hindu survivial.”
- Hindu-s do and did have centers of learning, where students and teachers congregated. These were critical to the efflorecence of hindu thought.
- “The padishaw, cherisher of Mohammedanism learned that in the provinces of Thatta, Multan and especially at Benaras, the brAhmaNa infidels used to teach their false books in their established schools, and their admirers and students, both Hindu and Muslim, used to come from great distances to these misguided men in order to acquire their vile learning. His Majesty, eager to establish Islam, issued orders to the governors of all the provinces to demolish the schools and temples of the infidels, and, with the utmost urgency, put down the teaching and the public practice of the religion of these unbelievers (imperial decree of 9th April 1669).” [Secondary source: M]
- Even during the British era, it was fairly common for scholars from southern India to soujourn to Kashi to gain advanced knowledge and prove their mettle. Even today in southern weddings, the groom ritually expresses his desire to go to Kashi (the motivation bein both religious and educational) before being ritually enticed into staying home.
- Of course, much knowledge was diffuse and preserved in households. But, much “advanced learning” was lost. The example of several lost hindu traditions based in kAshmIra and in Sindh are prime examples of this.