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In India yesterday afternoon, a ruling was passed by three judges sitting on the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court. The ruling was passed to put an end to a longstanding dispute between Muslims and Hindus over a site in Ayodhya. Both groups have claimed that the site is sacred to their faith. The ruling has asserted that the 2.77 acres of contested land must be divided equally between three factions.

The Sunni Muslim “Waqf Board” will receive a third, while those who wish to construct a Hiindu temple will receive one third, while the remaining third would go to the NIrmohi Ahkara, a Hindu group loyal to the deity Hanuman.

Initial reactions to the verdict were mostly calm. Before the verdict was announced, there was apprehension from some quarters. More than 2,000 people have been killed in rioting relating to the site. India is preparing to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and it was feared that if a situation of social unrest took place in Ayodhya, security would be diverted away from the games to deal with inter-communal rioting.

After the initial reports that local citizens in Ayodhya were happy with the judicial outcome Ranjit Lal Verma, the head of the Nirmohi Akhara, announced that he would be challenging the verdict. The Sunni Waqf Board was also unhappy with the ruling and had declared that it would be challenging the decision in the Supreme Court.

The story of the Ayodhya dispute is a story of clash of cultures, a conflict that has continued for more than a thousand years and shows no signs of abating.

While preparing this article, I found one website that claimed to explain the origins of the dispute now bears a message, declaring that it has been “hacked for Dar ul-Azat (House of Freedom)…” Most of the message is in Turkish, but ends with the words: “There is no God but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” The Turkish group “Devr-i Mefsedet” hacks many sites critical of jihad, and is probably the same Turkish group that launches Denial of Service attacks against web forums critical of Islam.

How Islam came to India is disputed. There have long been trade outposts, but some historians maintain that Islam spread through India by the sword, and some maintain that it spread by conversion. What is known is that Ayodhya is in Uttar Pradesh state in the northeast of India, a region which came under Islamic control later than other parts of the subcontinent.

Ayodhya is said to have come under Muslim control when it was conquered by the Tatar warlord and invader Zahir-ud-Din MuË™ammad Babur (1483 – 1530).  Babur’s mother was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, and his father was a direct descendant of Timur e-Leng (Tamburlaine). Babur, whose name is said to mean “tiger” was born in Uzbekistan but became the founder of the Mughal dynasty.

In Ayodhya there was a thriving Hindu community, and there was a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Ram (Rama), the seventh of the ten incarnations or “avatars” of Vishnu. Tradition maintains that Ram was born as a prince in Ayodhya. The epic  Sanskrit text called The Ramayana recounts how Ram’s wife Sita was abducted to (Sri) Lanka and how Ram, assisted by the deity Hanuman, fought to bring her back.

In 1528, on the site where Ram was said to have been born, a mosque was constructed. The command to build the mosque came from Babur. According to tradition Mir Baqi, one of Babur’s generals, had already torn down a Hindu temple dedicated to Ram and then sought permission from Babur to build the mosque. Babur granted permission for the mosque to be built and it was officially known as the Babri Masjid, after Babur.

Until 1940, the mosque was apparently known as Masjid-i-Janmasthan (“mosque of the birthplace”), in reference to the tradition that it was constructed on the site where Ram was said to have been born.

On December 6, 1992, a Hindu political rally in Ayodhya turned into a mob attack upon the mosque. The protesters, collectively called karsevaks, came from the membership of the Hindu nationalist parties the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Shiv Sena party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They effectively destroyed the 450-year old mosque.

The Hindus had planned for some time to challenge the mosque. In 1984, the VHP had planned to build a temple to Ram near the mosque. According to the BBC:

1986: District judge orders the gates of the disputed mosque opened to allow Hindus to worship there. Muslims set up Babri Mosque Action Committee in protest.

1989: VHP steps up campaign, laying the foundations of a Rama temple on land adjacent to the disputed mosque.

1990: VHP volunteers partially damage the mosque. Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar tries to resolve the dispute through negotiations, which fail the next year.

The destruction of the mosque led to widespread rioting, in which 2,000 people were killed.

Nine years later, on February 27, 2002, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims back from Ayodhya caught fire. This was reported at the time as a deliberate attack, carried out by Muslims. The train had apparently been pelted with stones as it pulled out of a station in Ghodra in Gujarat, before the carriages caught fire. More than 57 people died as a direct result of the train fire, but in the widespread rioting that followed, more than a thousand people died. The majority of these casualties were Muslim. Women and children were also among the dead.

On 5 July, 2005, five Islamists attacked the site of the Babri Mosque/Ram Janmabhumi, firing guns and trying to break through the wall cordoning off the site. The Islamists, who are thought to have been from Lashkar-e-Toiba, were killed in gunfire from the Central Reserve Police Force in a clash which went on for an hour. The terrorists had set off a bomb to destroy the fence and, in this blast a Hindu pilgrim, Ramesh Pandey, was killed.

The last will and testament of Babur is currently held in the State Library of Bhopal. It is addressed to his son and successor Humayan, and apparently states:

“My son take note of the following: do not harbour religious prejudice in your heart. You should dispense justice while taking note of the people’s religious sensitivities, and rites. Avoid slaughtering cows in order that you could gain a place in the heart of natives. This will take you nearer to the people.

“Do not demolish or damage places of worship of any faith and dispense full justice to all to ensure peace in the country. Islam can better be preached by the sword of love and affection, rather than the sword of tyranny and persecution. Avoid the differences between the Shias and Sunnis. Look at the various characteristics of your people just as characteristics of various seasons.”

If this is true, it indicates that Babur may have regretted the alleged destruction of the original Hindu temple at Ayodhya and other acts of vandalism. When Babur took control of that part of Uttar Pradesh, other Hindu temples were also destroyed. Fortunately for the revisionists, in the only account of that time – written by Babur himself –the relevant pages describing that period are missing.

The tradition of building a mosque on top of a site sacred to a conquered religion has been typical of Islamic history. It should also be noted that Christianity has similarly “re-oriented” places of pagan worship. It is for this reason that some ancient churches in Ireland contain obscene carvings called shelagh na-gigs in their walls – the older pagan statues were incorporated into the new churches, and claimed to show Mary displaying proof of her virginity.

Islam, however, has been built on iconoclasm, following the example of the prophet Mohammad, who destroyed symbols of paganism in Arabia. The famous Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was originally a Christian church from 537 onwards, when Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire. It was made into a mosque by the Ottomans. Under Ataturk, it was turned into a museum.

In Spain, invading Muslims destroyed the 5^th century church of St. Vicente and over its foundations erected a mosque. This mosque was the main center of worship in Corboba, the Muslim sultanate in Spain (also called Al-Andalus). The last portions of the Cordoba mosque were completed in 988 by Abu Aamir Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Ibn Abi Aamir, Al-Hajib Al-Mansur, or Al-Mansur. As I wrote earlier:

Al-Mansur was a despoiler of Christian places of worship. He went to Santiago de Compostela, and had his horse drink from the Cathedral there. He had the massive bells of its Cathedral dragged from Santiago 500 miles to Cordoba. Here the bells of Santiago were melted down to be made into oil lamps for his pet project, the Cordoba mosque.

In 1236, Cordoba was conquered by Ferdinand of Castile and was re-consecrated as a Christian site of worship. Ferdinand III ordered that the oil lamps be transported back to the shrine of St James at Santiago, where they were melted down to become made into bells again.

With the Reconquista completed, a cathedral was built within a part of the Cordoba mosque complex. In recent years Muslims have been attempting to demand their “rights” to treat the Cordoba Cathedral as a place of Islamic worship.  In April this year, when some members of a group of Muslims visiting from Austria tried to pray in the Cathedral, they were asked by security officials to continue their tour or leave. A dispute arose and two officials were seriously injured, apparently stabbed.

Though Muslim worship is forbidden in Cordoba Cathedral, in the past, visiting Muslim dignitaries have been allowed to prostrate themselves in prayer in the building. These included Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi of Libya.

The symbolism of Cordoba has not been lost on Muslims – Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf wanted to call his Ground Zero Mosque “The Cordoba Mosque,” and in this context, it was a deliberate attempt to impose the will of Islam. It was a part of a move to establish an Islamist beachhead near a site where Islamists had been “victorious” in an act of war.

For devout Muslims, land that was once Muslim can never be given back. For this reason, Osama bin Laden has often called in his broadcasts for Muslims to rise up and claim back the territory of al-Andalus.

Article Eleven of the Hamas Charter declares that the territory under Israeli control is a Waqf, an “inalienable religious endowment.” For that reason there can be no compromise with Israel.

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Muslim generations until Judgement Day.

It is no coincidence that in India, the Sunni Waqf Board has that name – they will not accept that the destruction of the Babri Mosque (itself built upon conquered Hindu territory) is the end of the story. The Babri Mosque site is a Muslim waqf, and should remain Muslim until the Day of Judgment. There will never be an end to the conflict surrounding Ayodhya unless India becomes entirely under Islamic rule.

Babur, at the end of his life, may have realized the harm and resentment that destroying others’ religious landmarks would engender, but the spread of Islam has always been accompanied by the notion that land, once conquered, shall never be returned.

It is a shame that in the West, so many governments have no awareness of the notion of protecting their territory from invasions by Islamists. These politically destructive individuals wish only to see the entire world subjugated under the anti-democratic and intolerant law of Sharia. They should never be indulged.

Adrian Morgan

The Editor, Family Security Matters.