India and Hinduism indeed survived the Muslim/Arabian religious/cultural and linguistic imperialism

Submitted by dhimmi no more, Feb 25, 2019 at 14:57

Historians tell us that the barbarian invades the land of the civilized, because the barbarian wants to usurp the wealth of the civilized. Usually the barbarian ends by adopting the language and the religion of the civilized. So we expect in the case of the Arab/Muslim invasions that the invading Arabs will become Christian or Jewish and Syriac/Hebrew speakers in the Middle East, And they will become Zoroastrians and Persian speakers in Iran. And they will become Christian and Greek, Armenian and Syriac speakers in the Byzantine empire. And in the case of India they will speak the languages of India and embrace the religious traditions of India be it Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism or Sikhism

However, the outcome of these invasions was not that simple as you shall see.

The Arabs invaded the lands of the civilized great empires of late antiquity in Persia and the Byzantine empire and the outcome was appealing. We see the end of Zoroastrianism in Persia only to be replaced by a minority form of Islam: Shi'a Islam, but the stubborn Persians retained their language and Iranian language (and therefore their unique culture) and rejected the Arabs and their culture and language..

We know what happened to the mighty Byzantine empire that ended with the capture of Constantinople 1453 AD. This was followed by the appalling genocides committed against the Greeks, Armenians and Syriac speakers that still resided in the Ottoman empire. And now most of residents of the old Byzantine empire are Sunni Muslims and Turkish speakers.

Compare this with India: Yes many Hindus converted to Islam (for various reasons) but the Indian core (not the periphery) survived the onslaught of Muslims and Islam, retained their languages and therefore their cultures. Even Muslims in India are very much Hindus more than they would admit and they might be wannabe Arabs but they will never be Arabs. I still have to meet a lost tablighee (Indian and Pakistani Muslims) that can speak Arabic.

India and Hinduism, no doubt, survived this appalling Arabian religious, cultural and linguistic imperialism

The real question is: Why did the Islamic invasions lead to such catastrophes? I will answer this question is another post

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".