Amir Khusrau: The Sick Bigoted Psychopath

Over the years, Indians have been subjected to a remarkable form of brainwashing and intellectual warfare.  Those who worked hard to destroy the land and its people have been carefully and gradually hoisted as the paragons of the greatest human virtues.  We have discussed about the Sufis earlier and have seen how they worked to kill Hindus of India.

Sufis – who were supposed to be Muslim “spiritual saints” – have been revered and exalted in the poetry, polemical accounts, and intellectual discourses.  Many, like Amir Khusrau, have been presented – sanitized by careful commentators – to the world as champions of a harmonized culture – often termed as “Ganga Jamuni” tehzeeb.  But is it really so?

Let us evaluate.

Amir Khusrau or Ab’ul Hasan Yamin ud-Din Khusrau lived between 1253 and 1325.  He was the disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya.

One of his greatest work is considered to be “Khaza’in ul-Fatah (translated as Treasures of Victory).  This documents the deeds and the wars of Alauddin Khilji, the invader who ravaged many parts of India.

The most circulated translation cum commentary on this work is by Mohammad Habib (download “Khaza Inul Futuh“, by Amir Khusrau), Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University.  His attempt in presenting Khusrau was not just to translate but normalize his psychopathic nature where he used high poetry in service of presenting Jihad and destruction of Hindus as the greatest virtue.  Habib writes in the preface to the book:

If Amir Khusrau had been writing in the age of the Puranas, he would have represented Alauddin as an incarnation of Vishnu and described his opponents as malicious demons. That is how the Aryans blackened the character of their enemies and justified their aggression. A modern writer would have to white-wash the same cruelties by talking of liberty, justice, the duty of elevating backward races and, with solemn unconscious humour, advanced the most humane arguments to justify the inhumanities of war. But Amir Khusrau was not a hypocrite ,* he saw life through plain glasses and the traditions of his day made hypocrisy unnecessary.“Campaigns of Ala’ud’din Khhilji Being the Khaza’inul Futuh” of Hazrat Amir Khusrau by Muhammd Habib, Professor of History, Aligarh Muslim University

Never mind that the whole Aryan invasion theory is a fabrication, Habib’s pathetic attempt at misinterpreting the Hindu scriptures and painting them in his bigoted views is remarkable for a professor of history.  But what is truly spectacular is that he used his prejudiced view to normalize the jihadi nature of Khusrau himself.

Khusrau’s glee at the blood flowing of “infidels” due to massacres by Khilji’s Jihadis and the breaking of the temples – are all not just written about but done so in detailed prose and eloquent poetry.  As if it was a great spectacle and high point of humanity.  Only very few can derive such pleasure and joy in such wanton bloodshed and destruction.

Khusrau’s writings have always been passionately whitewashed by bigots in the name of historical scholarship.   Many revisionists have subjected the Indian audience to Khusrau as a harmonizing force by terming Khusrau’s works as esoteric and other-worldly in the hope that the reader of his original work does not wake up to the reality.

“What you read is not really what he meant” being the refrain.  Let us see the man the way he was, religious bigots sanitizing him notwithstanding.

Jihadi Obsession with destruction of Somnath Temple

Somnath Temple’s destruction by Mahmud of Ghazni carried a special appeal for most invaders, intellectuals, religious and the Sufis in Middle East.  Just like Al-Beruni, who had read and plagiarized Indian works.  Remember he had studied Puranas, Aryabhata, Bhaskara and other great Indian mathematicians before he dished out his own copy-paste work for which he was given the credit as if he came up with it.  Al Beruni is known to have “described how his idol, Ghazni broke Somnath Linga and trampled it with his feet. He described slaughter of Hindus with great joy and glee.” (source)

The glee was not just Al Beruni’s.    It was also shared by Amir Khusrau.  The destruction of Somnath Temple by Ghazni was described by Khusrau “poetically” as prostration of Somnath to Ka’aba – saying that it was as if the upturned (broken/destroyed) “idol-house” (temple) first prostrated and then it fell into the sea thus taking bath.

This idiom of abuse and humiliation of Hindus was the common thread between the deeds of Ghazni and the writings of Khusrau.  What Khusrau dreamed of as the ideal, even Ghazni and Khilji fell short of.

“Idol-House” is in obvious derogatory reference to a place that was condemned under Islamic theology and awaited the same fate as Ka’aba, the erstwhile temple which Mohammad himself destroyed by breaking the idols inside.  And it comes for special abuse by Khusrau. Subjugation and inferiority of the Hindus, such that they had to prostrate before a monument thousands of miles away in a gesture of submission.  Submission to that monument which was the cornerstone of Islam was superimposed on Hindu Gods as well.

Bottomline of Khusrau’s rant on Somnath was that the god of Somnath was prostrating to the god of the Muslims.  That it was a destruction of a culture far more advanced and deep was never understood nor discussed.

In the chapter “Campaign of Ma’bar”, Khusrau describes the devastation that happened at Somnath in the following words: “On the other side, so much dust had been raised from the temple of Somnath that it dried up the bottom of the sea“

Amir Khusrau goes on the describe Hindu gods as demons and “shaitan” and devils who had possessed the land called Hindustan.  These symbols were taken out, prides Khusrau, from the “demon-lands” and it was only then that the “light of Shariat” shone in the land.  The Mullah’s call dispelled the “contamination of the false beliefs” through his daily morning call.

This was the level of his hate-filled rhetoric and bigotry.

Love for temple destruction

The obsessive hatred for Hindus and temples were not just confined to Somnath, but all the temples.  To Amir Khusrau, temples were places of unbelief.  To uproot and destroy them was to uproot the foundations of unbelief.  Non-believers, Kafirs, had no basis to exist in his view of the world, as we shall see later.  He celebrated how the destruction of temples paved the way for the construction of mosques and other buildings by Khilji.

Destruction of the temple was described, again poetically by a psychopath, as “uprooting the foundations of unbelief”.  The breaking down of temples was no more than a sport in strength and control.  Whatever was still left in the Sanctum Sanctorum of these temples was the victim of pick-axes.  And, Khusrau found this as an “elegant discourse” which dug out the foundation of unbelief.

Khusrau’s Dream of Killing all Hindus from India

Khusrau later writes in this book.

that he (the sultan) so ordered the massacre of all the chiefs of Hindustan out of the pale of Islam, by his infidel-smiting sword, that if in his time it should by chance happen that a schismatic should claim his right, the pure Sunnis would swear in the name of this Khalifa of God, that heterodoxy has no right.Khaza’inul Futuh, Extract from “The Legacy of Jihad” by Andrew Bostom

It is obvious that in the eyes of Amir Khusrau, the only people who were worthy of being alive were Sunni Muslims.  Through this piece of writing, Khusrau was setting the right to life, exclusively for the most orthodox of Sunni Islam.

Not only was he satisfied that Hindus, or “infidels”, would be smited (hit hard) by the sword of Islam in the name of the Khalifa, but he also says that this is a warning to any heterodoxy – meaning Shia and other strains of Islam – that only extremist Sunni version of Islam is the real way.

Far from being moderate or even spiritual, Khusrau was a champion of hardcore ISIS type of terrorist mindset.  And this becomes even more clear later in his book Ashiqa, written just four years later.  There he writes:

Happy Hindustan, the splendour of Religion, where the Law finds perfect honour and security.  The whole country, by means of the sword of our holy warriors, has become like a forest denuded of its thorns by fire… Islam is triumphant, idolatry is subdued.  Had not the Shariat Law granted exemption by death by the payment of poll-tax, the very name of Hind, root and branch, would have been extinguished.Ashiqa, Extract from “The Legacy of Jihad” by Andrew Bostom

Few things to note in his extract from Ashiqa:

Hindus are “thorns of Hindustan” as per Khusrau, and sword of Islamic warriors has established the “splendor of religion” by denuding the forest called Hindustan of these “thorns”.

Khusrau laments the enforcement of Jiziya, where the Hindus had to pay a religious tax to just stay alive.  He laments Jizya not because it was unjust and inhumane.  But because it was a road-block to killing ALL the Hindus

Khusrau – a sick psychopath

Did we call him a psychopath earlier?  Think of it clearly and dispassionately – a population is subjugated and made to live in slavery and have to pay to remain alive.  And, here is a madman, who finds that unacceptable.  He wants all the Hindus to be killed and finds this inhuman imposition of Jiziya as an irritant in his dream of how he wants to see India as.  A complete Sunni domain – with the thorns called Hindus exterminated from the entire length and breadth of its geography!

One has seen psychopathic serial killers talk in such ways and idioms.  Not poets.  For such a sick mind to then compose prose and poetry of his psychopathic dreams makes Amir Khusrau a person who can make even Ted Bundy look like a venerable saint!

So, when the so-called intellectuals at the various literary fests in India and seminars present Amir Khusrau as the paragon of religious harmony, music, poetry and love, please remember that they are part of the brigade in India that revels in hatred for Hindus and they are endorsing a sick psychopath whose greatest lament in life remained that relentless subjugation and slavery was a poor substitute for his biggest dream – exterminating Hindus from the land called India.  He couldn’t succeed because the fascist yet weak rules of Sharia-led slavery came in the way of his even bloodier aims – complete annihilation of Hindus!

And, that is the legacy of Amir Khusrau that no one discusses.

Extract from Legacy of Jihad