Here is an exchange between Todd Caldecott and Max Rodenbeck in the Letters Column of The New York Review of Books, on the latter’s claim (in a previously-published review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation) that the Muslim practice of forced conversion was “historically rare” and “revived only recently by ultra-extremist groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria or ISIS in Iraq.” Caldecott provides, by way of answer, an impressively horrifying list of just some of the recorded instances of mass murder of Hindus in India and the mass destruction of Hindu temples and libraries:
For example, in the thirteenth century, Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji destroyed the ancient university of Nalanda, killing all the Buddhist monks and nuns, taking literally three months to burn every single book in the university’s library. Imagine if ISIS or al-Qaeda killed everyone on campus at Harvard or Yale, and burned all the lecture halls, libraries, churches, synagogues, and cultural institutions: such was the untold impact on India, in almost every part of India, for a thousand years.
Similar examples of forced conversions and brutality can be found during the reigns of Mahmud Khalji of Malwa (1436–1469 AD), Ilyas Shah (1339–1379 AD), Babur (1483–1530 AD), and Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545 AD), all of whom destroyed temples, killed non-Muslims, and forced the conversion of entire communities. Even during the so-called sulah-i-kul (“peace with all”) initiated by Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542–1605 AD), his son Shah Jahan, known for his supposed monument to love, had almost a hundred temples destroyed in the ancient city of Varanasi alone. Jahan’s son Aurangzeb brought an end to any pretense of this institutionalized peace, and went on a rampage, killing Hindus, destroying temples, and placing severe restrictions on already impoverished Hindu cultural institutions.
Caldecott concludes: “Hopefully, in light of this evidence, Mr. Rodenbeck can reevaluate his claim that the forced conversion in Islam is a ‘historically rare practice.'”
In his reply, Rodenbeck concedes the point at once:
Regarding forced conversion and Islam, it is far from my intent to whitewash a long and mixed record. I stand corrected in my injudicious use of the word “rare.” There are indeed numerous instances of forced conversion to Islam…
But then he goes on to insist, backtracking from his backtracking, that in the case of India, the large number of Hindus who remained testify to an absence of “forced conversions.” What they testify to, in fact, is not to Muslim mildness but to the following:
- The Hindu population of India was very large, the number of Muslim invaders comparatively very small. Conversion of such numbers took time; what impresses is not how few Hindus became Muslims but how many. There are now 840 million Hindus in historic India (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) – lands once almost entirely Hindu (with a small admixture of Buddhists). And there are now 502 million Muslims in historic India (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), where at the beginning of the eighth century there were none. Caldecott thinks the more telling figure is that of the 502 million Muslims; Rodenbeck would have us be impressed that the Muslims left so many Hindus alive, which he thinks shows the “absence of forced conversions” rather than being simple testimony to the size of the task.
- The definition of “forced conversion” ought to include not only conversion at the point of a sword or a scimitar, but all those conversions by Hindus in India to avoid the jizyah and the host of other disabilities imposed on those Hindus who were allowed to live as a matter of policy. But why were those Hindus allowed to live? Not out of the goodness of Muslim rulers’ hearts, as Rodenbeck implies, but in order to have enough people to continue paying the jizyah, on which the Muslim state relied.
- Rodenbeck seems to think that the survival of any non-Muslims under Muslim rule, no matter how few, testifies to Muslim mildness. He swerves from his his discussion of India to the East Indies (present-day Indonesia), where he claims – correctly –that on the island of Bali, 85% of the 4 million Balinese are Hindus. But that is the only island, out of hundreds, where the Hindus held out. Surely more meaningful is the fact that Hindus now constitute less than 2%, and Buddhists 0.8%, of the overall population of Indonesia (now 260 million) that, before the Muslim traders arrived, was 100% Hindu and Buddhist.
- K. S. Lal and other historians, both Indian and Western, have calculated that more than 80 million Hindus were killed by Muslims during 250 years of Mughal rule in much of India. Rodenbeck does not address this issue of genocide at all. Perhaps, since those tens of millions of Hindus were not subjected to “forced conversion,” he may think these figures are not relevant to the discussion — after all, they were quite dead.

Adrian says
But Rodenbeck is still defiant and denies that “…the practice of forced conversion is somehow embedded in the genes of Islam.”
He continues to throw smoke: “It is not. Muslim foundational texts and legal traditions are complex and contradictory, and in practice most Muslim rulers have either not considered, avoided, or sparingly inflicted forced conversion.”
More blah, blah, blah equivocating and excuse – making from dhimmi Western media
note this example from Canadian regressive liberal John Semley (listen starting at the 42 minute mark):
https://soundcloud.com/politeconversations/episode-4-john-semley-is-charlie-hebdo-racist
mortimer says
Rodenbeck …denied that “…the practice of forced conversion is somehow embedded in the genes of Islam.”
The Biography of the Apostle”, part 4, Ibn Hisham says (page 134):
“Muhammad sent Khalid Ibn al-Walid to the tribe of the children of Haritha and told him: ‘Call them to accept Islam before you fight with them. If they respond, accept that from them, but if they refuse, fight them.’ Khalid told them: ‘Accept Islam and spare your life.’ They ENTERED ISLAM BY FORCE. He brought them to Muhammad. Muhammad said to them: ‘Had you not accepted Islam I would have cast your heads under your feet”’
2015 – Pakistani Council of Islamic Ideology supports ‘forced conversion’
Here is the important point: “In November 2015, the Pakistani Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Council of Islamic Ideology opposed a law on “forced conversion”, sparking dismay and protests among Pakistani Hindus and Christians.”
This APPROVAL OF FORCIBLE CONVERSION…thus putting the lie to the claim that Islam does not have forcible conversion in its DNA.
No less than the ‘Pakistani Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Council of Islamic Ideology’ refused to protect vulnerable Hindus and Christians from forcible conversion due to death threats and/or abduction.
Is Max Rodenbeck going to admit he is wrong?
Shane says
Anything that Muhammad did is considered to be okay for Muslims do to today, including rape, murder, pedophilia, executing captives, forcing women to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men, stoning adulterers, killing blasphemers (Charlie Hebdo massacre), and of course, holy war against the infidels. Mo is considered to be the perfect example for Muslims to follow so it is okay for Muslims to lie to defend Islam or deceive the enemy, as Mo did!
KnowThyEnemy says
Shah Jahan was Akbar’s grandson, not son. If anyone reading this knows how to contact Todd Caldecott, please point out this error and ask him to fix it.
Left unfixed, the Islamophiles will use the error to discredit Todd and his post in its entirety.
mortimer says
The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.
– Will Durant (U.S. Historian)
Islam was not a torch, as has been claimed, but an extinguisher. Conceived in a barbarous brain for the use of a barbarous people, it was – and it remains – incapable of adapting itself to civilization. Wherever it has dominated, it has broken the impulse towards progress and checked the evolution of society.
– Andre Servier (French Writer)
-Sir Jadunath Sarkar contended that several Muslim invaders waged a systematic Jihad against Hindus in India to the effect that “Every device short of massacre in cold blood was resorted to in order to convert heathen subjects.”
The Muslim conquests, down to the 16th century, were for the Hindus a pure struggle of life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. Every new invader made (often literally) his hills of Hindus skulls. As a contribution to research on the quantity of the Islamic crimes against humanity, we may mention that the Indian population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanat).
– Konreraad Elst (Belgian Historian)
The massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.
– Francois Gautier (French Writer and Journalist)
“My principal object in coming to Hindustan (India) and in undergoing all this toil and hardship has been to accomplish two things. The first was to war with the infidels, the enemies of Islam; and by this religious warfare to acquire some claim to reward in the life to come. The other was a worldly object; that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth and valuables of the infidels: plunder in war is as lawful as their mothers’ milk to Muslims who war for their faith, and the consuming of that which is lawful is a means of grace.” -Tamerlane
Rodenbeck cannot make up his own facts. Consequenty, his opinions are totally unsupported by them.
Rodenbeck is dishonest about what the historical record reveals. Forced conversions and conversions after burdensome discrimination (i.e. conversions to relieve the suffering of Hindus and their families) cannot be demonstrated as ‘rare’.
A claim must be supported and proved by evidence and Rodenbeck has none.
mortimer says
For a worthwhile article about the sufferings of India under Islam, read:
https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/islamic-invasion-of-india-the-greatest-genocide-in-history/
the renegade says
Muslims did not rule tHe entire indian sub continent for a thousand years. This is a lie and a myth by islamic and western historians. Hindus survival instinct kicked in after the murderous rampage of Islam and followed a brutal retaliation which is not mentioned in order to survive. Hindus didnot survive due to Islam’s mercy. This is total bullshit. Islam and Muhammad have no mercy and are evil to the core.
Muslims were never mild, they were afraid of what would happen if united hindus rose up which they ultimately did after all the genocide which western media and historians deny marking a dubious duplicity and hypocrisy that is an existential threat to western civilisation and Christianity as it was a threat to Hinduism.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh were lost due to Britsh who destroyed and sided with Islamic animals when Hindu kings were beginning to consolidate. Timing was awful as India was under siege from all sides.
I see this now happening in Europe ironically starting with UK. Karma. Islamic sieges are brutal. Either you fight and prevail or give up by converting or pay Jiziya.
No wonder bad blood runs through our viens for Islam. If you believe in karma, there will come a day when hindus will sieze and destroy mecca and medina and dig up the grave of the demon Muhammad whose spirit is still alive and is in a marked grave, and burn it to ashes by consuming it in flames of God.
Islam’s crimes will soon catch up to it and judgment day for evil Muhammad is fast approaching.
Jai Hind!
Jack Diamond says
Dwelling on direct forced conversion alone belies the fact Islam is nothing but coercion and compulsion. Though forced conversions themselves are routine, unless as defined in Muslimese.
The entire condition of dhimmi peoples, humiliated and oppressed in order to feel themselves “subdued” was coercion and compulsion to convert to Islam for an easier life, which many did, when not to forced outright (such as kidnapped “brides”or Janissaries). After all, at any time dhimmis could lose their “protected” status and open war would again be made upon them. Infidels were only ever given but three choices: convert, live in subjugation, or die (sura 9:29) except when they were given but two choices: convert or die (sura 9:5). Compulsion in religion to anyone but a Muslim. To this day, the condition of Muslim to Infidel is one of a permanent state of war, with the exception of (temporary) truce or dhimmi pact, or hostilities deferred depending how weak and vulnerable the Muslims are.
Here is the model of conduct for all Muslims setting an example of forced conversion: Ibn Hisham p.134 ‘Biography of the Apostle’ “Muhammad sent Khalid ibn al-Walid to the tribe of the children of Harith and told him ‘call them to accept Islam before you fight with them…if they refuse, fight them.’ They entered Islam by force. He brought them to Muhammad (who said): ‘had you not accepted Islam, I would have cast your heads under your feet.'” Convert or die. Clear enough?
Amazing but true, forced conversion is yet another Muslim word-game:
Tabari, Hisham & Ibn Kathir repeat the story of Muhammad, about to attack Mecca, when his men arrest a Meccan leader Abu Sufyan, and bring him to Muhammad. Muhammad tells him ‘Woe to you O Abu Sufyan. Is it not time for you to realize that there is no God but the only God?” Abu Sufyan answers “I do believe that.” Muhammad then says “Woe to you Abu Sufyan, is it not time for you to know that I am the Apostle of God?” Abu Sufyan answers “By God, O Muhammad, of this there is doubt in my soul.”
al-Abbas present with Muhammad, says to Abu Sufyan ‘Woe to you! Accept Islam and testify that Muhammad is the Apostle of God before your neck is cut off by the sword!’ Thus, he (Sufyan) professed the faith of Islam and became a Muslim.” (Tabari pt2,pg157; Ibn Kathir ‘Biography of the Prophet’ pt3,pg549)
(the late) Dr. Muhammad al-Buti (‘The Jurisprudence of Muhammad’s Biography’) repeats this story and worries some will protest faith should not be imposed by threats of death. “What is required of an infidel or one who confuses other gods with God, is to have his tongue surrender to the religion of God and to subdue himself to the Prophethood of Muhammad. But his heartfelt faith is not required at the beginning. It will come later.” It is not “forced conversion” you see, because you are not forced to believe it, just forced to repeat words with your tongue and submit. So why then should Hamas hesitate to force Fox journalist Steve Centanni to repeat the shahada at gunpoint? It’s not forcing him to believe anything.
mortimer says
Thanks to Jack Diamond.
I have filed his excellent description of normative forcible conversion in Islam. The trick is at the end…’you are not forced to believe it, just forced to repeat words’.
This is ‘farced’ conversion. Travesty is also normative Islam…one thing made up as another.
However, once one recites the shehada, it’s irrelevant what one privately thinks. The insincere convert is still trapped in Islam with execution his only way out of it.
Execution always stands over the shoulder of every Muslim.
K. says
I like and respect Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but I don’t share her optimism. Islam doesn’t need a reformation because it can’t be reformed. What it needs is annihilation.
Cunamarra says
Yes, I remember when she first began speaking about Islam. Here solution for Muslims was to “get out of it as fast as you can.” I think in despair she has compromised her position. The people who surround her and whom she constantly has to confront don’t share her intellect and changing their minds with sound reason and logic is like trying to shape the blob with tools made of steel.
Christianblood says
Please sign this petition on the link below:
http://stopthechristiangenocide.org/en/acknowledge.html
Angemon says
This is the usual response I get from muslims when talking about of the brutal genocide of Hindus. “You’re full of s***, there’s millions of Hindus in India, where’s the genocide?”.
saturnine says
Hugh wrote: “… all those conversions by Hindus in India to avoid the jizyah and the host of other disabilities imposed on those Hindus who were allowed to live as a matter of policy.”
The jizya option is only applicable to “People of the Book”, i.e. Jews and Christians. Hindus, being polytheists, are only to be offered conversion or death.
Hindu American says
There were a few “moderate” Muslim rulers who allowed the Hindus to live upon payment of jizziya.
Jack Diamond says
The Hanafite legal school gave rulers in India the right to allow Hindus toleration as dhimmis, for pragmatic reasons.
Christians (and Jews) are also variously referred to as polytheists, idolators, or “mushrikoon” by Islamic scholars, since they are considered guilty of shirk, worshipping other than Allah and giving him partners. There were jurists like Ibn Taymiyya who were not fond of tolerating them (as dhimmis) either. Islam Q&A referencing sura 9:32-33 says “here Allah calls the kuffar kuffar and He calls them mushrikeen. This indicates that a kaafir may be called a mushrik and a mushrik may be called a kaafir.” See the Verse of the Sword again. Applicable when needed.
sidney penny says
“But then he goes on to insist, backtracking from his backtracking,”
Yes the BUT
sidney penny says
“Even during the so-called sulah-i-kul (“peace with all”) initiated by Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542–1605 AD), his son Shah Jahan, known for his supposed monument to love, had almost a hundred temples destroyed in the ancient city of Varanasi alone. Jahan’s son Aurangzeb brought an end to any pretense of this institutionalized peace, and went on a rampage, killing Hindus, destroying temples, and placing severe restrictions on already impoverished Hindu cultural institutions.”
“known for his supposed monument to love.”
Shah Jahan did not build it.” his supposed monument to love” is correct.
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/was_the_taj_mahal_a_vedic_temple.htm
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/distorted_history_of_taj_mahal.htm
http://satyameva-jayate.org/2005/11/07/the-biggest-whitewash-in-indian-history/
Hindu American says
For what its worth, a quick look at history:
Bulk of the Hindus survived the systemic and organized genocide by the Muslims because Hindus regrouped and fought back, often in equal or greater fervor. We soon learnt that the Muslims fear those who fight back. The Islamic rulers and invaders soon gave up and agreed to accommodate the Hindus as second class citizens.
Unlike the ancient people of Persia, Turkey and the Egypt who gave up far too easily. They should have fought on.
For centuries, our ancient scientific knowledge and wisdom from the Vedas and Puranas were stolen and passed on to the Arabs and Turks who eventually took credit for the bulk of our inventions, prose, thoughts and discoveries. However, our collective memories run deep and our now modified DNA will not let us forget what happened to our people, our culture and our knowledge. That’s why it saddens me to read what is happening in Europe today and how the Europeans are meekly giving up without even a fight. And, its all happening so fast.
Those of you who want to read about the Hindu genocide and how we fought back, its all in this wonderfully written book by Sita Ram Goel. Its called “Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders – 636 AD to 1206 AD”. You can download it from : http://www.hindustanbooks.com/pdfs/6493883-Heroic-Hindu-Resistance-to-Muslim-Invaders.pdf. Caution: its not an easy reading for the weak in the stomach.
The 80 million Hindus who were murdered over six hundred years are, in a way, a testament to the determination of my ancestors who preferred to die rather than submit to this murderous desert cult. The dead are the ones who fought back. They hit back, hard. The ones who willfully converted to Islam now form the bulk of the Muslims in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Many of them eventually migrated to Europe and America, and now are the problems that we read about in JW. Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims who are casually termed “Asians” by the Brits are the ones regularly arrested in the UK for rapes, suicide bombings, kidnapping and pedophilia. Even more what is disturbing is the fact that most Muslims on the streets of London who are currently demanding Sharia as law of the land are progeny of those same willful, relatively recent converts who migrated from the hinterlands of Punjab and Bengal.
Apologies for the long winded history lesson. Keep up the good work RS.
sidney penny says
How did the Hindu survive?
http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hhrmi/
Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD)
SITA RAM GOEL Voice of India, New Delhi
“PERVERSE VERSION OF INDIAN HISTORY
This version of Indian history was formulated by a few misinformed or motivated British historians. But many Hindus participated in popularising this version in the mistaken belief that they were thus proving the superiority of India’s spiritual culture over the materialistic civilization of the modern West. In due course, this became the standard lore taught in our schools and colleges under the system of education sponsored by Christian missionaries and British bureaucrats. The same system of education has not only continued after independence but has also multiplied manifold. It has spread this version of Indian history to larger and larger segments of succeeding generations. Muslim and Marxist historians have promoted it with an ever-increasing zeal. They may not have any use for Hindu spirituality. But they find this version of Indian history very convenient for advancing their imperialist causes.
In the process, India’s history has become a history of foreign invaders – Aryans, Iranians, Greeks, Parthians, Scythians, Kushans, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British – rather than a history of the greatest civilization which the world has known, and later on of Hindu heroism which fought and ultimately frustrated all foreign invaders. India itself has become a sub-continent seething with a mass of heterogeneous humanity rather than an ancient and indivisible Hindu homeland. Indian people have become a conglomeration of nationalities, racial groups and religious communities which are finding it difficult to co-exist in peace, rather than a national society which is trying to reform itself and reclaim some of its unfortunate sections alienated from it by successive waves of Islamic, Christian and modern Western imperialism. And Indian culture has become a mechanical mixture of odds and ends, indigenous and imported, rather than a homogeneous whole created by a vast spiritual vision which is finding itself ill at ease with incompatible impositions.
It was this version of India’s history which gave a good conscience to the British imperialist while he pulverised Hindu society, plundered Hindu wealth and poured undisguised contempt on Hindu culture. It was this version of India’s history which emasculated Hindu society and emboldened the residues of Islamic imperialism to stage street riots and then walk away with precious parts of the Hindu homeland, thus consolidating an aggression which had not succeeded even though mounted again and again for more than a thousand years. It is this version of India’s history which is being invoked by the fifth-columns of Islam, Christianity, and Communism, each of which looks forward to a final conquest of this country with the help of foreign finances and, if need be, foreign firearms. And it is this version of India’s history which is being promoted by power-hungry politicians who woo the Muslim vote-bank while they divide Hindu society into mutually hostile camps.”
Mitch says
“Rodenbeck: ‘Regarding forced conversion and Islam… I stand corrected in my injudicious use of the word “rare.” There are indeed numerous instances of forced conversion to Islam’
But then he goes on to insist, backtracking from his backtracking, that in the case of India, the large number of Hindus who remained testify to an absence of ‘forced conversions.’ ”
Reminds me of when Robert Spencer debated his old college professor, author Peter Kreeft (resolved: “The only good Muslim is a bad Muslim”), where Kreeft spent the first minute conceded every one of Spencer’s points before spending the rest of his time tergiversating back to his original position.