Hugh Fitzgerald: Was Forced Conversion to Islam Really “Historically Rare” in India?

Here is an exchange between Todd Caldecott and Max Rodenbeck in the Letters Column of The New York Review of Books, on the latter’s claim (in a previously-published review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation) that the Muslim practice of forced conversion was “historically rare” and “revived only recently by ultra-extremist groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria or ISIS in Iraq.” Caldecott provides, by way of answer, an impressively horrifying list of just some of the recorded instances of mass murder of Hindus in India and the mass destruction of Hindu temples and libraries:

For example, in the thirteenth century, Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji destroyed the ancient university of Nalanda, killing all the Buddhist monks and nuns, taking literally three months to burn every single book in the university’s library. Imagine if ISIS or al-Qaeda killed everyone on campus at Harvard or Yale, and burned all the lecture halls, libraries, churches, synagogues, and cultural institutions: such was the untold impact on India, in almost every part of India, for a thousand years.

Similar examples of forced conversions and brutality can be found during the reigns of Mahmud Khalji of Malwa (1436–1469 AD), Ilyas Shah (1339–1379 AD), Babur (1483–1530 AD), and Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545 AD), all of whom destroyed temples, killed non-Muslims, and forced the conversion of entire communities. Even during the so-called sulah-i-kul (“peace with all”) initiated by Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542–1605 AD), his son Shah Jahan, known for his supposed monument to love, had almost a hundred temples destroyed in the ancient city of Varanasi alone. Jahan’s son Aurangzeb brought an end to any pretense of this institutionalized peace, and went on a rampage, killing Hindus, destroying temples, and placing severe restrictions on already impoverished Hindu cultural institutions.

Caldecott concludes: “Hopefully, in light of this evidence, Mr. Rodenbeck can reevaluate his claim that the forced conversion in Islam is a ‘historically rare practice.'”K. S. Lal and other historians, both Indian and Western, have calculated that more than 80 million Hindus were killed by Muslims during 250 years of Mughal rule in much of India. Rodenbeck does not address this issue of genocide at all. Perhaps, since those tens of millions of Hindus were not subjected to “forced conversion,” he may think these figures are not relevant to the discussion — after all, they were quite dead. Read it all here...............