Islamization of history
The Islamization [Islamisation] of history is phrase coined out of history is written by the victors. In this case Islamization of history is produced by and within those regions where Islam has an established dominance. The Islamization of history is carried out in several ways. Where a country has become Islamic, there is an effort to change or alter history so that it reflects more favourably on the religion of Islam. This can extend to wiping out or redirecting the actual origins of a country's people, so that there can be an established Arabian origin CIA Factbook.
Moreover the body of Islam, Islamized the history of its achievements or contributions, by adding achievements that were not entirely their own [the number zero], or exaggerating or overemphasizing accomplishments done in collaboration with other cultures, notably because these cultures were conquered by Islam and their pre-existing knowledge base was added to that of the Islam base of knowledge.
In addition, Western historians who have been fearless in examining western history have been accused of being kinder and even timid when dealing with the history of Islam. It can be argued that this reluctance to examine and present Islam’s history forthright has contributed to Muslim efforts to Islamize history.
Modern Attempts To Islamize History
The case of Pakistani school history books is one example of modern day attempts to Islamize history.
When the General Pervez Musharraf government attempted to introduce chapters in the students history books on the history of Hinduism, Buddhism and ancient emperor Chandragupta Maurya, there was protest from some quarters, most notably the MMA, who staged a protest walkout in Pakistani National Assembly.
“That may be your history, (but) ... our history (starts) from Makkah and Medina,” MMA member Farid Ahmad Piracha shouted as he led his alliance's walkout.
Pakistan was created around 60 years ago through the Partition of India, which means that its history is largely Indian's history. Some believe that since the partition was based on religious grounds, school textbooks were written, to leave out references to most of the region's 5000 year old history from the Mohenjadaro and Taxila, including all history which pre-dated Islam and the arrival of Islam on Indian soil.
According to the Sri Lankan Sunday Times of Pakistan school textbooks:
The (text) books correctly highlight the glories of the Mughal period: "In the entire history of the subcontinent no other dynasty acquired as much importance as the Mughal dynasty."
In contrast, the Hindu period is dismissed in one sentence: "The Hindus were not much interested in history and we have a very few historical records of this period."
The downfall of the great Mughal Empire is attributed to this: "They had lost in the course of time their great spirit of jihad and self-sacrifice."
In an introduction to Indian history and culture, prescribed for class VIII, the chapter on the Muslim invasion of Sind says: Its administration by Muslims was marked by political wisdom. Toleration was extended to the Hindus who came to be known as protected people and were allowed to stick to their faith and observe their religious practices in return for a tax called jizya, or poll tax."
This verses a quote from Will Durant:
"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."
And other version of India's history with Islam in a passage from the Koenraad Elst site.
Hinduism's losses
There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Islam. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that, over 13 centuries and a territory as vast as the Subcontinent, Muslim Holy Warriors easily killed more Hindus than the 6 million of the Holocaust. Ferishtha lists several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like "punishing" the Hindus; and they were only a third-rank provincial dynasty. The biggest slaughters took place during the raids of Mahmud Ghaznavi (ca. 1000 CE); during the actual conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori and his lieutenants (1192 ff.); and under the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). The Moghuls (1526-1857), even Babar and Aurangzeb, were fairly restrained tyrants by comparison. Prof. K.S. Lal once estimated that the Indian population declined by 50 million under the Sultanate, but that would be hard to substantiate; research into the magnitude of the damage Islam did to India is yet to start in right earnest.
Note that attempts are made to deny this history. In Indian schoolbooks and the media, an idyllic picture of Hindu-Muslim harmony in the pre-British period is propagated in outright contradiction with the testimony of the primary sources. Like Holocaust denial, this propaganda can be called negationism. The really daring negationists don't just deny the crimes against Hindus, they invert the picture and blame the Hindus themselves. Thus, it is routinely alleged that Hindus persecuted and destroyed Buddhism; in reality, Buddhist monasteries and universities flourished under Hindu rule, but their thousands of monks were killed by Ghori and his lieutenants.
Apart from actual [...], millions of Hindus disappeared by way of enslavement. After every conquest by a Muslim invader, slave markets in Bagdad and Samarkand were flooded with Hindus. Slaves were likely to die of hardship, e.g. the mountain range Hindu Koh, "Indian mountain", was renamed Hindu Kush, "Hindu-killer", when one cold night in the reign of Timur Lenk (1398-99), a hundred thousand Hindu slaves died there while on transport to Central Asia. Though Timur conquered Delhi from another Muslim ruler, he recorded in his journal that he made sure his pillaging soldiers spared the Muslim quarter, while in the Hindu areas, they took "twenty slaves each". Hindu slaves were converted to Islam, and when their descendants gained their freedom, they swelled the numbers of the Muslim community. It is a cruel twist of history that the Muslims who forced Partition on India were partly the progeny of Hindus enslaved by Islam.
Gautier "Let it be said right away: the massacres perpetrated 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."
Negationism means that this whole aspect of Indian history has been totally erased, not only from history books, but also from the memory, from the consciousness of Indian people. Whereas the Jews have constantly tried, since the [...] [...], to keep alive the remembrance of their six million martyrs, the Indian leadership, political and intellectual, has made a wilful and conscious attempt to deny the [...] perpetrated by the Muslims.
References
CIA World Factbook: Algeria - Ethnic groups
Pakistan's MMA against teaching pre-Islamic history - By Raja Asghar
Truncated history lessons a strain on India-Pakistan ties - by Kuldip Nayar
The origin of numbers, UNESCO Courier, Nov, 1993 - by Tony Levy
Was There an Islamic "[...]" of Hindus?
REWRITING INDIAN HISTORY - by Francois Gautier