The historical narrative of Kashmir: myths and realities

“A CATASTROPHE still to come”, by Ebrahim Essa, the POST, August 20-24, is a variation of the same chilling threat given by al-Qaeda and such organisations to non-Muslims — something repeated down the centuries: it’s our way or no way except death.

- THENALI RAMAN Johannesburg

If one does express a contrary view, one must go into hiding, one's throat is slit or one is decapitated. For them the pre-Islamic age in Indian history is an unacceptable Jahiliya, an age of ignorance, unenlightened barbarism, etc, as they disparagingly term any history preceding the revelation of the Qur’an through Mohammed.

AS VS Naipaul has said, this doctrine “denies the value and even the existence of civilisations that preceded the revelations of the Qur’an ... It was an article of 6th and 7th century Arab faith that everything before it was wrong, heretical. There was no room for the pre-Islamic past ... the effects of an ideological nurture”. A person is taught “that he or she has no historical antecedents before the conquest of parts of India and its conversion to the faith.”