Vandalism Sanctified By Scripture

In his article Sanctified Vandalism As A PoliticalTool, Yoginder Sikandtries to explain away Muslim iconoclasm as marginal and uncharacteristic, whileaccusing "the Hindus and others" of just such iconoclasm. In bothendeavours, he predictably relies on Richard Eaton's book Essays on Islam andIndian History (OUP Delhi 2000).

According to Sikand, "Eaton clearly shows that cases of destruction ofplaces of worship were not restricted to Muslim rulers alone. He recountsnumerous instances of Hindu kings having torn down Hindu temples, in addition toJaina and Buddhist shrines. He says that these must be seen as, above all,powerful politically symbolic acts." Follows a list of such allegationsagainst historical Hindu kings.

As it takes at least a page to evaluate or refute an allegation uttered in asingle sentence, I cannot discuss those allegations here, so I will accept forthe sake of argument that there have indeed been "instances of Hindu kingslooting Hindu idols and destroying Hindu temples for political purposes".However, it is obvious that these do not create Sikand's desired impression ofsymmetry between Hindu and Muslim iconoclasm. Such symmetry would require thatlike Hindu kings, whose goal was political rather than religious, Muslim kingsalso destroyed places of worship of their own religion. Eaton and Sikandwould succeed in blurring the contrast between Hindu and Muslim attitudes toplaces of worship if they could present a sizable list of mosquesdestroyed by Muslim conquerors.

In a further attempt to blame even Muslim iconoclasm on the alleged Hinduexample, Sikand quotes Eaton again: "It is clear that temples had been thenatural sites for the contestation of kingly authority well before the coming ofMuslim Turks to India. Not surprisingly, Turkish invaders, when attempting toplant their own rule in early medieval India, followed and continued establishedpatterns." How strange then that the Muslim records never invoke the Hinduexample: invariably they cite Islamic scripture and precedent as justificationfor desecrating heathen temples. As we shall see, the justification was providedoutside of the Hindu sphere of influence in 7th-century Arabia.

But at leastSikand admits the fact of Islamic iconoclasm: "It is truethat, as the historical records show, that some Muslim kings did indeed destroyHindu temples. This even Muslims themselves would hardly dispute." However,Sikand claims that unnamed "Hindutva sources" have grossly exaggeratedthe record of Islamic temple destruction: "Richard Eaton points out that ofthe sixty thousand-odd cases of temple destruction by Muslim rulers cited bycontemporary Hindutva sources one may identify only eighty instances 'whosehistoricity appears to be reasonably certain'."

In his seminal book Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them,independent Hindu historian Sita Ram Goel has listed two thousand cases where amosque was built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple. Not one of theseverifiable items has been proven false, not by Sikand nor by Eaton or othereminent historians. It is also instructive to see for oneself what Eaton'spurported "eighty" cases are, on pp.128-132 of his book. These turnout not to concern individual places of worship, but campaigns of destructionaffecting whole cities with numerous temples at once. Among the items on Eaton'slist, we find "Delhi" under Md. Ghori's onslaught, 1193, or "Benares"under the Ghurid conquest, 1194, and again under Aurangzeb's temple-destructioncampaign, 1669. On each of these "three" occasions, literally hundredsof temples were sacked. In the case of Delhi, we all know how the singleQuwwat-ul-Islam mosque replaced 27 temples, incorporating their rubble. At thisrate, Eaton's "eighty" instances easily match Goel's two thousand,perhaps even the unnamed Hindutva author's "sixty thousand".

Sikand continues with an oft-used argument: "Caution must be exercisedin accepting the narratives provided by medieval writers about the exploits ofkings, including their 'feats' of temple destruction. Most historians wereemployees of the royal courts, and they tended to exaggerate the 'exploits' ofthe kings in order to present them as great champions of Islam, an image thathardly fits the facts that we know about them." So, as Sikand admits in somany words, the Muslim chroniclers were collectively convinced that they couldenhance the standing of their patrons as "champions of Islam" byattributing to them "feats of temple destruction". Perhaps some ofthem were liars, as Sikand alleges, and merely attributed these feats of templedestruction to kings who had no such merit. But fact is: all of them, liars aswell as truth-tellers, acted on the collectively accepted premise that a goodMuslim ruler is one who extirpates idolatry including its material places andobjects of worship. They all believed that Islam justifies and requires thedestruction of idol temples. And rest assured that, like the Taliban, they hadreceived a far more thorough training in Islamic theology than Eaton or Sikand.

In a further attempt to minimize Muslim iconoclasm, Sikand claims: "Asin the case of Hindu rulers' attacks on temples, Eaton says that almost allinstances of Muslim rulers destroying Hindu shrines were recorded in the wake oftheir capture of enemy territory. Once these territories were fully integratedinto their dominions, few temples were targetted. This itself clearly shows thatthese acts were motivated, above all, by political concerns and not by areligious impulse to extirpate idolatry."

In fact, there were plenty of cases of temple destruction unrelated toconquest, the best-known being Aurangzeb's razing of thousands of temples whichhis predecessors had allowed to come up. But I concede that stable Muslimkingdoms often allowed less prominent temples to function, most openly theMoghul empire from Akbar to Shah Jahan. This was precisely because they couldonly achieve stability by making a compromise with the majority population.

Islamic clerics could preach all they wanted about Islamic purity and theextirpation of idolatry, but rulers had to face battlefield realities (apartfrom being constrained by the never-ending faction fights within the Muslimelite) and were forced to understand that they could not afford to provokeHindus too far. Akbar's genius consisted in enlisting enough Hindu support oracquiescence to maintain a stable Muslim empire. After Aurangzeb broke Akbar'scompromise, the Moghul empire started falling apart under the pressure of theMaratha, Jat, Rajput and Sikh rebellions, thus proving the need for compromise acontrario.

In order to justify this compromise theologically, the zimma systemoriginally designed for Christians and Jews (but excluding polytheists, acategory comprising Hindus) was adapted to Indian conditions. This zimma or"charter of toleration" implied the imposition of a number ofhumiliating constraints on the non-Muslim subjects or zimmi-s, such as thetoleration tax or jizya, but at least it allowed them to continue practisingtheir religion in a discreet manner. The long-term design was to make thenon-Islamic religions die out gradually by imposing permanent incentives forconversion, as witnessed by the slow plummetting of Christian demography inEgypt or Syria, from over 90% in the 7th century via some 50% in the 12thcentury to about 10% today. The system had the same impact in South Asia,yielding Muslim majorities in the areas longest or most intensely under Muslimcontrol.

To varying extents, the zimma system could include permission to rebuilddestroyed churches or temples. But even then, non-Muslim places of worship,though tolerated in principle, were not safe from Muslim destruction orexpropriation. The Ummayad mosque in Damascus was once a cathedral, as was theAya Sophia in Istambul; the Mezquita of Cordova was built in replacement of ademolished church. Eaton and Sikand can propose their rosy scenario of Muslimiconoclasts emulating an imaginary Hindu iconoclasm only by keeping thenon-Indian part of Muslim history out of view. It is entirely clear from theMuslim records that these temple-destroyers consciously repeated in India whatearlier Muslim rulers had done in West Asia. The first of these rulers was theProphet Mohammed himself. And this brings us to the crux of Sikand's argument.

When the Taliban ordered the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, a secularistchoir assured us that this had nothing to do with "genuine Islam". Tome it seems rather pretentious for secularists with their studied ignorance ofreligions to claim better knowledge of Islam than the Taliban, the"students (of Islam)", whose mental horizon consists of nothing butthe detailed knowledge of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Nonetheless, Sikand repeats the exercise: "Most importantly, a distinction must be madebetween Islamic commandments, on the one hand, and the acts of individualMuslims on the other. The Qur'an in no way sanctions the destruction of theplaces of worship of people of other faiths."

In deciding what is genuinely Islamic and what is not, it must be borne inmind that Islamic law is very largely based on the precedents set by theProphet. Thus, it is lawful to kill Rushdie because the Prophet himself had hadhis critics executed or murdered. Likewise, the Taliban could justify theirdestruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas with reference to Mohammed's own exemplaryiconoclasm. The primary Islamic sources on the Prophet's career (the Hadis andSira) teach us that during his conquest of Arabia, he did destroy a number offunctioning cult shrines of the Arab Pagans, as well as a Christian church. Whenhe was clearly winning the war, many tribes chose to avoid humiliation andmartyrdom by crossing over to his side, but he would only allow them to join himon condition that they first destroy their idols. The truly crucial event wasMohammed's entry into the Kaaba, the central shrine of Arabia's native religion,where he and his nephew Ali smashed the 360 idols with their own hands.

When Mohammed appeared on the scene, Arabia was a multicultural countryendowed with Pagan shrines, churches, synagogues and Zoroastrian fire-temples.When he died, all the non-Muslims had been converted, expelled or killed, andtheir places of worship laid waste or turned into mosques. As he had orderedbefore his death, only one religion remained in Arabia. If we were to believeYoginder Sikand, Mohammed's iconoclasm was non-Islamic. In reality, Mohammed'sconduct is the definitional standard of what it is to be a good Muslim.

It is true that the Quran has little to say on temple destruction, though itis very eloquent on Mohammed's programme of replacing all other religions withhis own (which obviously implies replacing temples with mosques). Yet, the Qurantoo provides justification for the smashing of the objects of non-Islamicworship. It claims that Abraham was the ancestor of the Arabs through Ismail,that his father had been an idol-maker, that he himself ordered the idols of histribe destroyed (Q.37:93), and that he built the Kaaba as the first mosque, freeof idols. It further describes how Abraham was rewarded for these virtuous acts.Obviously it cannot be un-Islamic to emulate a man described by the Quran as thefirst Muslim and favoured by Allah.

If Abraham existed at all, the only source about him is the Bible, whichcarries none of this "information". It tells us that Ismail was theson of Abraham's Egyptian concubine Hagar, and that she took her son back toEgypt; Arabia is not in the picture at all. Nor do pre-Islamic Arab inscriptionsmention Abraham, Ismail or their purported aniconic worship in the Kaaba. TheQuranic story about them is pure myth. Considering the secularist record onlambasting "myths", I wonder why Sikand has not bothered to pour scornon this Quranic myth yet.

All the same, Islamic apologists regularly justify the desecration of theKaaba by Mohammed as a mere restoration of Abraham's monotheistic mosque whichhad been usurped by the polytheists. This happens to be exactly thejustification given by Hindus for the destruction of the Babri Masjid, with thisdifference that the pre-existence of a Hindu temple at the Babri Masjid site isa historical fact, while the pre-existence of monotheistic and aniconic worshipestablished by Abraham at the Kaaba is pure myth. At any rate, the Islamicaccount itself establishes that the model man Mohammed desecrated the Kaaba andforcibly turned it into a mosque, setting an example for Mahmud Ghaznavi,Aurangzeb and the Taliban to emulate.

Let us conclude with a comment on Sikand's conclusion: "Hindus andMuslims alike, then, have been equally
guilty of destroying places of worship, and, in this regard, as in any other,neither has a monopoly of virtue or vice. The destruction of the mosque inRajasthan and building a temple in its place, like the tearing down of the BabriMasjid by Hindutva zealots or the vandalism of the Bamiyan Buddhas by theTaliban, shows how sanctified vandalism and
medieval notions of the politics of revenge are still alive and thriving in ourpart of the world."

Look how claims are smuggled into this conclusion which have not beenestablished in Sikand's argumentation. Even by Sikand's own figures, Hindus andMuslims were far from "equally" guilty, as a handful of alleged casesof temple destruction by Hindus do not equal the "eighty"well-attested Islamic cases. Also, the notion of revenge, attributed here toHindus and Muslims alike, does not apply to both. The Hindu kar sevaks inAyodhya were arguably taking revenge for the destruction of the pre-existing Rammandir, but the Islamic destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was not a case ofrevenge on anyone. The Taliban or Afghan Islam in general had not been hurt orthreatened by Buddhists or by any other religion. Their iconoclasm was not acase of vengeance, but of unilateral and unprovoked aggression.

Nobody in this forum, or so I hope, claims a "monopoly of virtue"for the members of one religion, nor that of vice for those of another. Theproblem with religions is that they can make virtuous people commit vicious actsout of innocent piety, viz. by ordaining vicious behaviour as divinelysanctioned. In spite of Sikand's attempt to whitewash Aurangzeb, evidenceremains plentiful that this Moghul emperor committed acts of persecution andiconoclasm which would generally be considered vicious (they certainly would ifcommitted by Hindutva activists, witness the torrent of abuse after thedemolition of the Babri Masjid). Yet, by all accounts, Aurangzeb was a virtuousman, not given to self-indulgence, eager to fulfil his duties. Likewise, theKashmiri "militants" who massacre Hindus are not people of evilcharacter. They have left fairly cosy jobs or schools behind to put their liveson the line for their ideal, viz. bringing Kashmir under Islamic rule. It is the