ly and put it in a vessel containing wheat flour.
Though Persia had a rich civilization before Islam but once Islam entered Persia it enriched every walk of its life. It produced a syncretic culture much richer than it had before. It produced Hafiz and Sa’di both from Shiraz. The ghazals (love poetry) of both these poets has survived for centuries and would continue to delight humanity for centuries to come. The ghazal poetry of Persia in post-Islamic era is without parallel in the world. These are just two names among hundreds who made great names for themselves.
Also, the world would have been much poorer but for the grandeur of Islamic architecture like Asfahan. It is rightly said that Asfahan nisf jehan i.e. Asfahan is like half the world in grandeur. It’s architecture is indeed without parallel. Than who can ever forget the glory of Taj Mahal. Lovers of whole world desire to once come and see this jewel of architecture.
This is not all. There are many more architectural wonders around the Islamic world in Central Asia, especially Tashkent, Bukhara and several other places. Muslims also developed the art of calligraphy to its perfection and hundreds of thousands of books written are delight to readers’ eyes. Also, calligraphy became part of Islamic architecture and several buildings have Qur’anic verses inscribed from Qur’an on these buildings are as beautiful as on paper.
It was Islam in medieval ages which spread the light of knowledge. The Qur’an calls knowledge light and ignorance as darkness. The Prophet (PBUH) said and which is often quoted by Muslims that a scholar’s ink is more sacred than a martyr’s blood. The myth of jihad is exposed by this saying of the Prophet. Jihad never means, as popularized by vested interests a fight with weapons but, as its root meaning suggests, to strive for spreading goodness sincerely. And for Sufis the greatest jihad (jihad-i-akbar) is to suppress ones desires, greed, anger and personal ambitions
If these base sentiments are suppressed where is the question of fighting with sword? Why one fights with weapons? To realize personal ambitions and that is sin, not jihad. Jihad with weapons could be permitted at best for ones own defence as Qur’an strictly forbids Muslims from committing aggression as Allah does not love aggressors. If despite all this one commits aggression it cannot be responsibility of Islam.
If a person distorts meaning of jihad to realize his personal ambitions no fair-minded person will hold Islamic teachings responsible for that. If someone does as western media and a section of politicians have been doing, it is not only utter ignorance but also because of their vested interests. A serious scholar would never buy such cheap propaganda. But unfortunately the lay readers and watchers of media do fall victim to it and develop strong prejudices against Islam and Muslims.
It is interesting to note here that western media changes its colour according to its interests. In seventies of the last century when after war between Egypt and Israel oil became a precious commodity and west could not do without the Arab oil, a month long Islamic festival was organized in London and Islam’s contribution to world civilization was projected in a very positive light and the media carried hundreds of articles praising Islam and its contribution.
However, when Israel emerged as strong and Arab states were controlled thanks to unconditional support of USA, the whole attitude of the US rulers changed and especially so after the collapse of Soviet Union, they need another powerful enemy and so they began to project Islam as an ‘evil’ as earlier communism was an ‘evil’. First they used Osama bin Laden to bring about collapse of Soviet Union and then targeted Osama to portray Islam as an ‘evil’.
So it is all function of ones interest and not any conviction Now that political conditions are changing fast in West Asia one has to see how media portrays Islam. Now it would be difficult for US rulers to get away supporting few despots in that region and will have to deal with common people’