| Religious-civilizational
explosions are like floods and earthquakes. Only in retrospect do
their adherents and proponents look for and offer justification for
them. When they take place, they are their own justification, or
condemnation for victims. This was clearly true of the first Islamic
wave in the seventh and eighth centuries, which saw the beginning of
the attack on the frontiers of our civilization in Afghanistan,
Eastern Iran, Baluchistan, and Sind, and this was equally true of
the second Turkic Islamic wave which overtook us precisely because
our defences on the border had finally gave way after three to four
centuries of bitter fight.
In parenthesis, I might mention that
Arab Islam was as much a victim of this Turkic Islamic explosion as
Hindu India. Indeed, for all practical purposes, the Turks took over
the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad by the middle of the tenth century,
that is long before Mahmud Ghaznavi began his raids into India
proper. The sack of Baghdad in 1258 was only the culmination of a
process that had been on for well over three centuries; in fact,
close to four.
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