India is not alone in bloody association with Islam. Much of the present Islamic world was once home to a gentle people with gentler, pantheist beliefs. The great Persian Empire, that is, the House of Achamenes and then the House of Sassan ruled over multi-cultural peoples of Asia and Europe, and bequeathed them perfect freedom to worship their own Gods to find peace of their individual conscience. The year 642 AD saw the advent of Islam; and from this to relatively modern times, the world experienced what it was to be slaughtered in the name of belief.
I am Persian Zoroastrian by extraction; Zoroastrian in belief, Indian in loyalties. The holy vedic land of India gave our people refuge when we faced extinction - for the Hindus this noble action was not even something they gave themselves airs about - they just did their duty. And this duty was one of love, expressed through a timeless deed. These deeds encompass vedic values of humanism; like Hinduism, Zoroastrianism is a vedic religion.
In stark contrast, Persia under Islam sought to exterminate us - we were the infidel. We still are. Islam is the faith of exclusion; it excludes all for the sake of itself. So, what we see in the actions of Muslim rulers such as Auranzeb are abberations - these kings merely carry out action as sanctioned by their faith. To them, the bloodshed is holy. Persia today, in the hub of terror, is the result of its Islamic present - of muslim clerical rule.
It is time that the world awakened to the murderous philosophies that has straddled it for over 1300 years. It is time that the Muslims faced Islam and asked 'why'. It is time muslims reject exclusivism, and embrace the world as a beautiful creation of God. And as is said, a person must face himself or herself to see how beautiful or how ugly he/she looks. So must religion and faith through rational experimentation - something disallowed by pain of death in Islam. The seeds of its own destruction lie within Islam; but then, so do the seeds of its renewal into a kinder, gentler faith of expansion through love alone.
The world has faced many such Auranzebs. But none like in India in which a civilisation has been murdered on the alter of the crescent and the star. But not fully. Bharat awakens again. This holy, beautiful land, where people have so much, without owning aby of it!
