Robert Spencer: ABC’s Quantico Pushes Myth of Hindu Terror, Ignores Reality of Jihad Against Hindus

Reuters reported Friday that “U.S. television studio ABC has apologised to Indian fans of its crime drama ‘Quantico’ after an episode featuring Indian nationalists trying to frame Pakistan in a terrorist plot sparked online outrage against Bollywood actor Priyanka Chopra, who plays a lead role in the show.”

The series features Chopra as an FBI agent. In the controversial episode, she “holds up sacred Hindu prayer beads as evidence that the plotter in the episode, planning to detonate a nuclear bomb in New York, was an Indian nationalist.” Hindu scholar David Frawley remarked: “The myth of Hindu terror, by a fake story, enters American television with the help of Priyanka Chopra. Would any Pakistani actress betray Pakistan or Islam the way she betrays India and Hinduism?”

The show wasn’t actually Chopra’s fault — she doesn’t write the scripts. But it is just the latest example of how much fear of “Islamophobia” dominates popular culture, such that this popular show can depict a people who have historically been the victims of a devastating jihad as perpetrators of terrorism themselves.

Much of this myopia is justified by Leftist politically correct academics. Rutgers Newark professor Audrey Truschke would have you believe that in India, Muslim rule at its apogee between the 16th and 18th centuries was characterized by “tremendous cross-cultural respect and fertilization and not religious or cultural conflict.”

Truschke is the author of a biography of the brutal and bloodthirsty seventeenth-century Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. “The Aurangzeb of popular memory bears only a faint resemblance to the historical emperor,” she says, and claims that the idea that Aurangzeb’s zeal for Islam led him to oppress the Hindus is a historical myth.

In my new book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, I introduce you to the real Aurangzeb, beyond these ridiculous academic myths, in his own words and the words of eyewitnesses to his deeds. Aurangzeb in 1670 issued this decree: “Every idol-house built during the last 10 or 12 years, whether with brick or clay, should be demolished without delay. Also, do not allow the crushed Hindus and despicable infidels to repair their old temples.”

A Muslim historian, Saqa Mustad Khan, writing just after Aurangzeb died in 1707, reported that in January 1680, Aurangzeb “went to view lake Udaisagar, constructed by the Rana, and ordered all the three temples on its banks to be demolished.” The following day, “Hasan Ali Khan brought to the Emperor twenty camel-loads of tents and other things captured from the Rana’s palace and reported that one hundred and seventy-two other temples in the environs of Udaipur had been destroyed.” Later that year, “Abu Turab, who had been sent to demolish the temples of Amber, returned to Court…and reported that he had pulled down sixty-six temples.”

Bakhtawar Khan, a nobleman during Aurangzeb’s reign, was also pleased, noting that “Hindu writers have been entirely excluded from holding public offices, and all the worshipping places of the infidels and great temples of these infamous people have been thrown down and destroyed in a manner which excites astonishment at the successful completion of so difficult a task.”

Nor was Aurangzeb singular. One of his predecessors, the Delhi sultan Sikandar Lodi, in the words of the contemporary Muslim historian Niamatullah, “ordered the temples and idols to be demolished, and mosques to be constructed.” Then he “moved out on a plundering expedition into the surrounding country, where he butchered many people, took many prisoners, and devoted to utter destruction all the groves and habitations; and after gratifying and honouring himself by this exhibition of holy zeal he returned to his capital Bayana.”

Yes, plundering, butchering, and destroying temples was, as far as Niamatullah was concerned, an “exhibition of holy zeal.” Niamatullah wrote admiringly of Sikandar Lodi that “the Islamic sentiment [in him] was so strong that he demolished all temples in his kingdom and left no trace of them. He constructed sarais, bazars, madrasas and mosques in Mathura, which is a holy place of the Hindus and where they go for bathing. He appointed government officials in order to make sure that no Hindu could bathe in Mathura. No barber was permitted to shave the head of any Hindu with his razor. That is how he completely curtailed the public celebration of infidel customs. If a Hindu went there for bathing even by mistake, he was made to lose his limbs and punished severely. No Hindu could get shaved at that place. No barber would go near a Hindu, whatever be the payment offered.”

You won’t learn all this at Rutgers, or most any other American university. Nor will you ever hear anything about it on “Quantico.” On “Quantico” they’re too busy transposing into the modern world fictions such as those retailed here by Audrey Truschke, and on campuses they’re too busy warning their students about “Islamophobia.” But you can get the truth in The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS: click here to preorder. The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS is the only comprehensive one-volume history of jihad in the English language, including not just the jihad in Europe but in India, Africa and elsewhere, drawing primarily on accounts of eyewitnesses and contemporary chroniclers. Arm yourself with the truth against the prevailing disinformation. Preorder here now.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.