Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... IS ISLAM NECESSARILY INTOLERANT? 199 full toleration was still allowed. Hindoos were not excluded from office nor subjected to the capitationtax. Christian missionaries were not hindered from making converts even in the imperial family. Two nephews of Jehangir embraced their faith. Under Shah Jehan, three sons of that Emperor professed three different persuasions. Dara adhered to the eclectic creed of Akbar; Shuja was a Shiah; Aurangzebe a bigotted Sonnite.1 Aurangzebe ultimately deposed his father; he put his brother Dara to death as an apostate; he restored the capitation-tax and the lunar year; he excluded Hindoos from office; he acted in short as a perfect Moslem bigot. He had his reward in the revolt of the noble Rajpoots and in the growth of the indomitable Mahrattas. He reigned from 1658 to 1707; his forty-nine years may be set against the forty-nine of Akbar. The history of these Mogul Emperors shows to my mind most plainly the essential intolerance of the Mahometan religion. Only one Mahometan prince ever gave full and perfect religious equality to all his people By a logical consequence, he deserted the religion against whose precepts his noblest acts were so many sins. Here and there a King like Abbas had laboured to secure his infidel subjects from actual personal oppression; but Akbar stands alone in thoroughly relieving them from every mark of degradation or inferiority. Among all the benefactors of their species few can claim a more honourable place than this most illustrious Emperor. In his own age he stood alone,2 not only in Islam, but in the whole world; Catholic and Protestant Christendom 1 Elpliinstone, ii. 416. William the Silent of Nassau maybe classed as a solitary exception. might both have gone and sat at his...