indian-sunni-muslims

"The first and foremost object of knowledge is that man should take stock of his own life."

"Most Deeni Madāris (Islamic educational institutes) fall into error and negligence in that every effort is being made to educate the students while no special effort is made for the actual object of education which is service to religion and its propagation so that after completing their studies they may become involved therein."

"There can be no greater injustice to religious education than the fact that those who are equipped with it, ultimately become instruments in serving the interest of the enemies of Islam."

"The evil and harm that goes with 'Molvi Fadil" examinations (M.A., PhD etc. degrees) offered by the government is not fully realised by us. These examinations are given so that the candidates may get certificates in order to find employment in English schools."

"People out there are burning in the fire of ignorance and you are wasting your time here inquiring about my health!"

"Observance of the Holy Prophet's (Muhammad) Shariah and of his personal example (Sunnah) has precedence over everything else."

"Sin is the key to misery."

"The existence of lover in the pavilion of the Beloved is a sin beyond comparison to any other."

"The love of Allah and His Prophet (Muhammad) is infinitely superior to the love of mortal human beings and of other worldly things."

"O Brother! There are thousands upon thousands who have been martyred and slain on the Divine way. Many other thousands are wounded and thrown prostrate. Those well known for their intellect have been perplexed in their search for Him and those famous for their religious knowledge are searching Him at the outskirts of His Glory and Tremulousness. Those, whose eyes and radiant and heart clairvant, are submerged in one drop of His ocean of His Majesty or singed like sparks from the fire of His Glory."

"Spiritual Guide should be perfect, well versed in the vicissitude of the mystic path, and firmly established in his high state. He should be a man who has experiences both the horror of God's Majesty and the delight of His beauty."

"O Dear! Live in this world brokenhearted and miserable. When Moses asked God: "O Lord where should I search You?" The answer came: "In the heart which is broken by the hand of detiny.""

"The Dervish should devote himself to the rememberane of Allah, rather than hanker after money or rather worldly gain."

"True faith can only be sustained through the love of Allah."

"Every breath of life is a priceless treasure; it should be devoted to the rememberance of the Lord."

"Being a Dervish is a state of mind, and does not necessarily depend on the type of dress that one wears. Dawood, Sulaiman and Yusuf were kings and apostles of God at the same time, while many eminent Sufis are known to have dressed richly and lived comfortably. Ideally, of course, it is preferable to follow the example of the Holy Prophet (Muhammad) who prided in simplicity and frugality."

"There is no honor in doing things and performng rites and ceremonies (e.g., extravagance on occasions of marriage etc.) Which are not permitted by the Shariah."

"A Dervish is one who opposes whatever his baser self impels him to do."

"Mystic way is infested with one's ego, devils, men and Jinn, thus making it impossible to travel along it without and experienced, holy man as one's ascort. Also there are many slippery places where it is easy to fall. And one can be plagued with misfortune and dangers from behind."

"Bliss and misery are two treasures of the Lord. The key to the former is submission, while the key to the latter is sin. The one who is fortunate has been blessed from his mother's womb. Such a person is given the key to bliss. The one who is unfortunate has been born accursed. Sin is the key to misery."

"No one can become a true and accomplished Sufi without first gaining mastery of the Shariah sciences; indeed venturing on the Sufi path without Shariah knowledge involves many pitfalls."

"Single-minded rememberance of Allah is the supreme source of felicity and happiness."

"O Brother! Sin for the servant is great calamity. May God protect us from such things! Sin in the beginning hardens the heart, which ultimatley leads to unbelief and wretchedness. Don't forget the wiles of Satan and the fate of Balāam Bāōur."

"The heart is asunder, singed to a kebab, This love has been the disaster of my life. My murder rests good on you, don’t worry, You have found grace, I am away from strife. “Enamoured” one day, “mad” on another, Each day I was given new names, new life. Why should I not drink my blood in envy? When today, with my rival they wine. The goblet’s lips kissed yours in ecstasy, My victory was to bite into mine. For you, I wandered streets with tearful eyes, Setting my heart on you was misery. We have washed your street with a storm of tears, Our begging bowl of a cap is now empty. Without replies now, this is what we found, That the messenger is our sole reply. Had asked for your picture to console my heart, Looking at it I am more uneasy. Your tyranny — boundless, day of reck’ning —one, I wonder how the account is compiled. Zafar, change the refrain, recite that ghazal, Of which each verse is your picked poetry."

"غازیوں میں بُو رہے گی جب تلک ایمان کی تخت لندن تک چلے گی تیغ ہندوستان کی"

"Zafar always put huge emphasis on his role as a protector of the Hindus and the moderator of Muslim demands. He never forgot the central importance of preserving the bond between his Hindu and Muslim subjects, which he always recognised was the central stitching that held his capital city together."

"I wish you had made me the master of royals, Or made my crown the bowl for alms and betrayals. You should have made me mad, crazy only for you, Why did you make me wise, capable of denials? You made me poor, fit only for sifting through dust, And I wish the dust of her feet were my trials. If you made me intoxicated with love, Why did you make the measure of life small vials? A wretched heart torn a hundred times over lives, To be the shoulder to rest her hair is my desire. If I were not worthy to be with the Sufis, Could have been good for the company of drunks, defiant? If you wished to burn me by parting from the pourer, Should have made me the lamp of the tavern’s foyer. The fire of beauty was not unveiled in the garden, Or the bulbul too would have been made a moth on fire. This incessant world is a vile place, O Zafar, Its cities should have been desolate and dire."

"I am the sinner’s fault, somewhat, Your devotee, O God, somewhat. I do not understand whole or part, In my heart, I know not all, somewhat. I remain loyal to you, Faithful I am, faithless – somewhat. Since I do not meet any other, With him I have communion – somewhat. The intoxication of love has given me flight, In bliss, I fly some things, somewhat. My dreams lie in wakefulness, I see visions better there, somewhat. I may not be anyone, yet, Don’t ask — I am what I am – somewhat. Let them think me their humble servant, I am the dust of the road, of the feet – somewhat. I have got the blessed eye of faith, O Zafar, from something I have moved to somewhat."

"دوست آں باشد که گیرد دست دوست در پریشان حالی و درماندہ کی دوست مشمرآنکه در نعمت زند لاف باری برادر خواندہ کی"

"My heart has no repose in this despoiled land Who has ever felt fulfilled in this futile world? The nightingale complains about neither the sentinel nor the hunter Fate had decreed imprisonment during the harvest of spring Tell these longings to go dwell elsewhere What space is there for them in this besmirched heart? Sitting on a branch of flowers, the nightingale rejoices It has strewn thorns in the garden of my heart I asked for a long life, I received four days Two passed in desire, two in waiting. The days of life are over, evening has fallen I shall sleep, legs outstretched, in my tomb How unfortunate is Zafar! For his burial Not even two yards of land were to be had, in the land of his beloved."

"He is Allãh, may He be glorified, the Most Exalted. During the august rule of the emperor, king of the world, Muhammad Shãh, there was a well-established idol-house in Kuhmum which was strengthened and fortified by a small fortress. The Khãn of lofty dignity (and) of high position, the source of generosity and mine of beneficence, the Khan who is the master of (high) position, (namely), Muhammad Sãlih, who prospers in the rectitude of the affairs of Faith, son of Hãjî Muhammad Kãzim was the ruler of Kuhmum. He is one of the select grandees of the city of Tabrîz which place is celebrated for producing great persons. (He) razed to the ground the edifice of the idol-house, and also broke the idols in a manly fashion. (He) constructed on the site a suitable mosque, towering above the buildings of all. The Angel of the Unseen communicated the date of its construction in the words: A mosque pleasant in appearance, well founded, and elegant. The year of the migration of the Prophet, may peace (of God) be upon him, was forty-two, one hundred and one thousand. Year AH 1142."

"Beware! open your eyes and take a lesson from the Divine Providence, How our misdeeds have assumed a Nadir figure (wonderful figure)."

"The common people (live in) poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and dwelling place of bitter woe."

"In the very first year of his reign, he [Jahangir] tortured Guru Arjun Dev to death. His contempt for Hindus comes out clearly in his Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri: “A Hindu named Arjun lived in Govindwal on the bank of river Beas in the garb of a saint and in ostentation. From all sides cowboys and idiots became his fast followers. The business had flourished for three or four generations. For a long time it had been in my mind to put a stop to this dukan-e-batil (mart of falsehood) or to bring him into the fold of Islam.” According to other accounts, he asked the Guru to include some surahs of the Quran in the adi Grantha, which the Guru refused to do. In the eighth year of his reign, he destroyed the temple of Bhagwat at Ajmer. He persecuted the Jains in Gujarat, and ordered that Jain monks should not be seen in his kingdom on pain of death. Finally, he sent Murtaza Khan to Kangra for reducing that city of temples. The siege lasted for 20 months at the end of which he himself went to Kangra for slaughtering cows in that sacred place of Hindus, and building a mosque where none had existed before."

"“Perhaps these in stances [Mewar, Kangra, and Ajmer] made a contemporary poet of his court sing his praises as the great Muslim emperor who converted temples into mosques.”"

"“The sect of the Sewras exists in most of the cities of India, but is especially numerous in Gujarat. As the Banyans are the chief traders there, consequently the Sewras also are plentiful. Besides making idol-temples for them, they have built houses for them to dwell in and to worship in. In fact, these houses are the headquarters of sedition. The Banyans send their wives and daughters to the Sewras, who have no shame or modesty. All kinds of strife and audacity are perpetrated by them. I therefore ordered that the Sewras should be expelled, and I circulated Farmans to the effect that wherever there were Sewras in my empire they should be turned out.”"

"“Of the whole population of Hindustan it is notorious that five parts in six are composed of Hindus, the adorers of images, and the whole concerns of trade and manufacture… are entirely under the management of these classes. Were it, therefore, ever so much my desire to convert them to the true faith, it would be impossible, otherwise than through excision of millions of men… but the massacre of a whole people can never be any business of mine.”"

"Jehangir was not so much a mediocrity as an able degenerate. Born of a Turkish father and a Hindu princess, he enjoyed all the opportunities of an heir apparent, indulged himself in alcohol and lechery, and gave full vent to that sadistic joy in cruelty which had been a recessive character in Babur, Humayun and Akbar, but had always lurked in the Tatar blood. He took delight in seeing men flayed alive, impaled, or torn to pieces by elephants. In his Memoirs he tells how, because their careless entrance upon the scene startled his quarry in a hunt, he had a groom killed, and the groom’s servants hamstrung—i.e., crippled for life by severing the tendons behind the knees; having attended to this, he says, “I continued hunting.”110 When his son Khusru conspired against him he had seven hundred supporters of the rebel impaled in a line along the streets of Lahore; and he remarks with pleasure on the length of time it took these men to die.111 His sexual life was attended to by a harem of six thousand women,112 and graced by his later attachment to his favorite wife, Nur JehanXVI—whom he acquired by murdering her husband. His administration of justice was impartial as well as severe, but the extravagance of his expenditures laid a heavy burden upon a nation which had become the most prosperous on the globe through the wise leadership of Akbar and many years of peace."

"“One day at Ahmadabad it was reported that many of the infidel and superstitious sect of the Seoras (Jains) of Gujarat had made several very great and splendid temples, and having placed in them their false gods, had managed to secure a large degree of respect for themselves and that the women who went for worship in those temples were polluted by them and other people… The Emperor Jahangir ordered them banished from the country, and their temples to be, demolished. Their idol was thrown down on the uppermost step of the mosque, that it might be trodden upon by those who came to say their daily prayers there. By this order of the Emperor, the infidels were exceedingly disgraced, and Islam exalted…”"

"“I am compelled to observe, with whatever regret, that notwithstanding the frequent and sanguinary executions which have been dealt among the people of Hindustan, the number of the turbulent and disaffected never seems to diminish; for what with the examples made during the reign of my father, and subsequently of my own, there is scarcely a province in the empire in which, either in battle or by the sword of the executioner, five or six hundred thousand human beings have not, at various periods, fallen victims to this fatal disposition to discontent and turbulence. Ever and anon, in one quarter or another, will some accursed miscreant spring up to unfurl the standard of rebellion; so that in Hindustan never has there existed a period of complete repose.”"

"During the reign of my father, the ministers of religion and students of law and literature, to the number of two and three thousand, in the principal cities of the empire, were already allowed pensions from the state; and to these, in conformity with the regulations established by my father, I directed Miran Sadr Jahan (spelling normalised) one of the noblest among the Seyeds of Herat, to allot a subsistence corresponding with their situation; and this is not only to the subjects of my own realms, but to foreigners - to natives of Persia, Roum, Bokhara, and Azerbaijan, with strict charge that this class of men should not be permitted either want or inconvenience of any type."

"Jahangir ordered that “a government collector or Jagirdar should not without permission intermarry with the people of the pargana in which he might be” for abduction and forced marriages were common enough."

"For towards the close of my father’s reign,... availing himself of the influence which by some means or other he had acquired, he [Abul Fazzel] so wrought upon the mind of his master [that is, Akbar], as to instil into him the belief that the seal and asylum of prophecy, to whom the devotion of a thousand lives such as mine would be a sacrifice too inadequate to speak of, was no more to be thought of than as an Arab of singular eloquence, and that the sacred inspirations recorded in the Koran were nothing else but fabrications invented by the ever-blessed Mahommed.... Actuated by these reasons it was that I employed the man who killed Abul Fazzel and brought his head to me, and for this it was that I incurred my father’s deep displeasure."

"A Hindu named Arjun lived in Govindwal on the bank of river Beas in the garb of a saint and in ostentation. From all sides cowboys and idiots became his fast followers. The business had flourished for three or four generations. For a long time it had been in my mind to put a stop to this dukan-e-batil (mart of falsehood) or to bring him into the fold of Islam. ...I ordered that he should be summoned His residences, camps and sons were given over to Murtaza Khan His property and cash were confiscated. I issued instructions that he should be put to death by torture."

"'On the 24th of the same month I went to see the fort of Kangra, and gave an order that the Qazi, the Chief Justice (Mir'Adl), and other learned men of Islam should accompany me and carry out in the fort whatever was customary, according to the religion of Muhammad. Briefly, having traversed about one koss, I went up to the top of the fort, and by the grace of God, the call to prayer and the reading of the Khutba and the slaughter of a bullock which had not taken place from the commencement of the building of the fort till now, were carried out in my presence. I prostrated myself in thanksgiving for this great gift, which no king had hoped to receive, and ordered a lofty mosque to be built inside the fort' ....'After going round the fort I went to see the temple of Durga, which is known as Bhawan. A world has here wandered in the desert of error. Setting aside the infidels whose custom is the worship of idols, crowds of the people of Islam, traversing long distances, bring their offerings and pray to the black stone (image)' Some maintain that this stone, which is now a place of worship for the vile infidels, is not the stone which was there originally, but that a body of the people of Islam came and carried off the original stone, and threw it into the bottom of the river, with the intent that no one could get at it. For a long time the tumult of the infidels and idol-worshippers had died away in the world, till a lying brahman hid a stone for his own ends, and going to the Raja of the time said: 'I saw Durga in a dream, and she said to me: They have thrown me into a certain place: quickly go and take me up.' The Raja, in the simplicity of his heart, and greedy for the offerings of gold that would come to him, accepted the tale of the brahman and sent a number of people with him, and brought that stone, and kept it in this place with honour, and started again the shop of error and misleading"

"There was a Hindu named Arjan in Gobindwal on the banks of the Beas River. Pretending to be a spiritual guide, he had won over as devotees many simple-minded Indians and even some ignorant, stupid Muslims by broadcasting his claims to be a saint. They called him guru. Many fools from all around had recourse to him and believed in him implicitly. For three or four generations they had been peddling this same stuff. For a long time I had been thinking that either this false trade should be eliminated or that he should be brought into the embrace of Islam. At length, when Khusraw passed by there, this inconsequential little fellow wished to pay homage to Khusraw. When Khusraw stopped at his residence, [Arjan] came out and had an interview with [Khusraw]. Giving him some elementary spiritual precepts picked up here and there, he made a mark with saffron on his forehead, which is called qashqa in the idiom of the Hindus and which they consider lucky. When this was reported to me, I realized how perfectly false he was and ordered him brought to me. I awarded his houses and dwellings and those of his children to Murtaza Khan, and I ordered his possessions and goods confiscated and him executed."

"“In Hindustan, especially in the province of Sylhet, which is a dependency of Bengal, it was the custom for the people of those parts to make eunuchs of some of their sons and give them to the governor in place of revenue (mal-wajibi)… This custom by degrees has been adopted in other provinces and every year some children are thus ruined and cut off from procreation. This practice has become common.”"

"On the 7th azar I went to see and shoot on the tank of Pushkar, which is one of the established praying-places of the Hindus, with regard to the perfection of which they give (excellent) accounts that are incredible to any intelligence, and which is situated at a distance of three kos from Ajmir. For two or three days I shot waterfowl on that tank, and returned to Ajmir. Old and new temples which, in the language of the infidels, they call Deohara are to be seen around this tank. Among them Rana Shankar, who is the uncle of the rebel Amar, and in my kingdom is among the high nobles, had built a Deohara of great magnificence, on which 100,000 rupees had been spent. I went to see that temple. I found a form cut out of black stone, which from the neck above was in the shape of a pig's head, and the rest of the body was like that of a man. The worthless religion of the Hindus is this, that once on a time for some particular object the Supreme Ruler thought it necessary to show himself in this shape; on this account they hold it dear and worship it. I ordered them to break that hideous form and throw it into the tank. After looking at this building there appeared a white dome on the top of a hill, to which men were coming from all quarters. When I asked about this they said that a Jogi lived there, and when the simpletons come to see him he places in their hands a handful of flour, which they put into their mouths and imitate the cry of an animal which these fools have at some time injured, in order that by this act their sins may be blotted out. I ordered them to break down that place and turn the Jogi out of it, as well as to destroy the form of an idol there was in the dome"

"'I am here led to relate that at the city of Banaras a temple had been erected by Rajah Maun Singh, which cost him the sum of nearly thirty-six laks of five methkally ashrefies. The principle idol in this temple had on its head a tiara or cap, enriched with jewels to the amount of three laks ashrefies. He had placed in this temple moreover, as the associates and ministering servants of the principal idol, four other images of solid gold, each crowned with a tiara, in the like manner enriched with precious stones. It was the belief of these Jehennemites that a dead Hindu, provided when alive he had been a worshipper, when laid before this idol would be restored to life. As I could not possibly give credit to such a pretence, I employed a confidential person to ascertain the truth; and, as I justly supposed, the whole was detected to be an impudent imposture. Of this discovery I availed myself, and I made it my plea for throwing down the temple which was the scene of this imposture and on the spot, with the very same materials, I erected the great mosque, because the very name of Islam was proscribed at Banaras, and with God's blessing it is my design, if I live, to fill it full with true believers.'"

"“The Emperor by the divine guidance, had always in view to extirpate all the rebels in his dominions, to destroy all infidels root and branch, and to raze all Pagan temples level to the ground. Endowed with a heavenly power, he devoted all his exertions to the promulgation of the Muhammadan religion; and through the aid of the Almighty God, and by the strength of his sword, he used all his endeavours to enlarge his dominions and promote the religion of Muhammad…”"