226 ISLAM AT WAR
all non-Muslims to the status ofdhimmis,that is second-class citizens in
their own country.
Aurangzeb reimposed on the newly ordaineddhimmisthe hatedjizya
that his predecessor Akbar the Great (1542–1605) had wisely abolished
early in his reign. The ruler’s aim was to curb the infidels and demonstrate
the distinction between the Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and the Dar
ul-Harb (the Land of Warfare and of the infidels). With that decision he
brought warfare to the Dar ul-Harb to make the distinction clear for all to
behold.
Concurrent with the war on Hinduism, the Muslim invaders of India
waged war against the Buddhists. BetweenA.D. 1000 and 1200 Buddhism
disappeared from India through the combined effects of its own weak-
nesses, a revived Hinduism, and Muslim persecution. Buddhism was erad-
icated from the homeland of its peace-loving and inspirational founder by
Muslim persecution inA.D. 1200.
The merciless and fanatical Qutb ud din Aibak sent his general, Mu-
hammad Khilji, to the northern Indian state of Bihar to continue the Mus-
lim conquests that had started in the late twelfth century. Buddhism was
the main religion of Bihar. InA.D. 1193, the Muslim general, who knew
nothing of Buddhism and considered it mere idolatry, put most of the
Buddhist monks in Bihar to the sword and destroyed a great library. His
troops went on a rampage of destruction, destroying the Buddhist sanc-
tuaries at Sarnath near Benares. Many noble monuments of the ancient
civilization of India were irretrievably wrecked by the iconoclastic Mus-
lim invaders. Those invasions were fatal to the existence of Buddhism as
an organized religion in northern India. The monks who escaped massacre
were scattered over Nepal, Tibet, and the south.
The Muslim conquests of Central Asia focused on the destruction of
Buddhist art that continues today with Afghanistani Taliban destruction
of the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan in February 2001. The iconoclasm of
Islam is nothing new, for as early as the eighth century the monasteries
of Kizil were destroyed by the Muslim ruler of Kashgar and the Sphinx
at Giza, Egypt, was defaced.
We have mentioned already that the Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians
who came under the control of Islamic conquerors had, in theory, a fate
different from those to whom the holy Scriptures had not been revealed.
Muhammad had some strong feelings about these peoples and inscribed
them upon the pages of the Koran:
Surah V, 57. O ye how believe!Chose not for friends such of those who
received the Scripture before you[italics added], and of the disbelievers,