#books

"I had not intended Islamic antisemitism to be the subject of my second book. After finishing my book on the Jihad, I wanted to do a book about all the subject peoples under Islam—what Bat Ye'or has accurately called the “civilization of dhimmitude.” So I began analyzing writings about the condition of Hindus and Buddhists subjugated by Jihad on the Indian subcontinent. I looked at the relatively progressive period, under the Mughul ruler Akbar the Great. He began as a pious Jihadist and waged very bloody campaigns against the Hindus, but something changed in the course of his rule.18 He became much more tolerant of Hindus, abolished the jizya , appointed Hindus to administrative positions, and seems to have become a Muslim-Hindu syncretist in his personal religious beliefs.20 This led to a brief flowering of Hindu society. His reforms were violently opposed by the Muslim ulema, and I was reading an anti-Hindu tract by an Indian Sufi Muslim theologian named Sirhindi who died in 1624. The tract contained a line that just jumped out at me. “Whenever a Jew is killed it is for the benefit of Islam.” I tried to get whatever biographical materials I could on Sirhindi and I could find no evidence that he had had any physical contact with Jews. This astonished me."

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