Joy-
Thanks for the forward! I sent the article on to a few more folks.
I wish he'd mentioned Hinduism as one of the religions tolerated by Islam. I mean, Zoroastrians were HUGE in their day, but very few people now know who the heck they were, whereas Hinduism is still one of the world's largest religions. I'd be interested to find out if the Mughal rulers used the specific "Sabian" loophole from the Koran, or independently decided the Hindus could meet the Koran's loophole requirements - namely, 1) monotheism (although seemingly polytheistic, all Hindus, even down to the poorest most illiterate child, apparently agree that there is only one God, with the others merely God's different faces), and 2) ancient written scripture, considered God's revealed word (the Vedas & Upanishads, plus the Bhagavad Gita). Of course, in my Hinduism class, it was explained that the Mughals found this very convenient, as it would have been impossible from a practical standpoint to put those millions of people to the choice of conversion or death by the sword!
Buddhism - I think, though I'm less clear on this point - has been tolerated by Islam to some extent under the aegis of Hinduism - it arose out of Hinduism, and has its own scriptures, the Sutras, etc. However, it's fuzzier because technically they don't believe in God at all. Which really would have required the Muslims to have turned a blind eye for practical purposes ... Though the further East Buddhism spread, the more Buddha came to resemble God ... Anyone have any more information about the clashes or tolerance between Muslims and Buddhists? Certainly they had some recent clashes in Myanmar, but significantly it was the Buddhists who were in power and the Muslims the minority - does anyone know for sure if any Buddhist nations were controlled by Muslims, and if so when and what happened to the Buddhists?
Received on 2003-05-30 09:46:43
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: 2020-02-04 07:16:17 UTC