Jihad predates British colonialism

THE column “Taliban upholds notion of jihad to protect Muslims” (the POST, September 1-5), refers.

The writers should not waste their time and ours if they do not have the guts to confront the truth.

Anyone who has studied history will know that Jihad is not about protecting Muslims or anybody else. Nor is it anti-colonial.

Historian Stanley Wolpert writes that against the people of India, jihads were waged “as much for plunder as for the promise of paradise”.

Tens of thousands were slain or enslaved by invaders, who claimed to kill, rape and rob in the name of God.

This was before British colonialism in India and before Deobandi Islam. Jihad goes back to the very beginnings of the faith.

Apologists try to create the impression that Jihad is something that resulted because of colonialism, political discontent, economic deprivation and so on.

But in The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to Isis, Islamic scholar Robert Spencer traces the origins of Jihad.

He deals with the centuries of attacks in Spain, India and so on. Spencer exposes how the Jihad against India, by Islamic conquistadors and colonisers, wrought unparalleled and unfathomable devastation in the name of their religion.

Since 2014, it has become common knowledge that the blueprint for the Jihad against India was crafted around 628.

It was called Ghazwa-e-Hind and is part of the Hadith.

And there is nothing anti-colonial about it.

In fact, when Tarek Fatah raised the topic of Ghazwa-e-Hind in an Indian TV channel, some clerics tried to wriggle out of it by bringing in the anti-colonial angle, claiming that the targets were supposed to be the British, and not Indians.

Yet Hindus are mentioned by name and the document predated British colonialism by several centuries. Others did not want to discuss it.

To cap it all, Pakistan repeatedly invokes the Ghazwa-e-Hind and Islamic invaders, Muhammad bin Qasim, Mahmood of Ghazni and others.

In March 2019, Ali Muhammad Khan, who is the minister of state for parliamentary affairs in Pakistan, had claimed that Pakistanis were the descendants of Islamic invaders in India and he warned India of an impending Ghazwa-e-Hind.