"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history..." -- Will Durant on page 459, Volume 1, of his eight volume Story of Civilization

Here are a few excerpts from pages 459-462 of the same volume:

The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history...The first Moslem attack was a passing raid upon Multan, in the western Punjab (664 AD). Similar raids occurred at the convenience of the invaders during the next three centuries, with the result that the Moslems established themselves in the Indus Valley about the same time that their Arab co-religionists in the West were fighting the battle of Tours (732 AD) for the mastery of Europe...In the year 997 a Turkish chieftain...swept across the [Indian] frontier with a force inspired by a pious aspiration for booty. He met the unprepared Hindus at Bhimnagar, slaughtered them, pillaged their cities, destroyed their temples, and carried away the accumulated treasures of centuries...Each winter Mahmud descended into India, filled his treasure chest with spoils, and amused his men with full freedom to pillage and kill...he expressed his admiration for the architecture of the great shrine [at Mathura on the Jumna], judged that its duplication would cost one hundred million dinars and the labor of two hundred years, and then ordered it to be soaked with naphtha and burnt to the ground. Six years later he sacked another opulent city of northern India, Somnath, killed all its fifty thousand inhabitants, and dragged its wealth to Ghazni...The first of [the] bloody sultans [of the Sultanate of Delhi] was a normal specimen of his kind -- fanatical, ferocious, and merciless. His gifts, as the Mohammedan historian tells us, "were bestowed by hundreds of thousands, and his slaughters likewise were by hundreds of thousands." Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlak...killed so many Hindus that, in the words of a Moslem historian, "there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion and his Civil Court a mound of dead bodies and a heap of corpses, while the sweepers and executioners were wearied out by their work of dragging" the victims "and putting them to death in crowds."..His successor, Firoz Shah, invaded Bengal, offered a reward for every Hindu head, paid for 180,000 of them, raided Hindu villages for slaves...Sultan Ahmad Shah feasted for three days whenever the number of defenseless Hindus slain in his territories in one day reached twenty thousand...The usual policy of the Sultans was clearly sketched by Alau-d-din, who required his advisers to draw up "rules and regulations for grinding down the Hindus..." Half of the gross produce of the soil was collected by the [Islamic] government; native rulers had taken one-sixth. "No Hindu," says a Moslem historian, "could hold up his head, and in their houses no sign of gold or silver...or of any superfluity was to be seen...Blows, confinement in the stocks, imprisonment and chains, were all employed to enforce payment."

Bernard Lewis on Islam's inherent totalitarianism

From the essay "Communism and Islam" in International Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Jan., 1954), pp. 1-12:

I turn now from the accidental to the essential factors, to those deriving from the very nature of Islamic society, tradition, and thought. The first of these is the authoritarianism, perhaps we may even say the totalitarianism, of the Islamic political tradition...Many attempts have been made to show that Islam and democracy are identical -- attempts usually based on a misunderstanding of Islam or democracy or both...In point of fact, except for the early caliphate, when the anarchic individualism of tribal Arabia was still effective, the political history of Islam is one of almost unrelieved autocracy...[I]t was authoritarian, often arbitrary, sometimes tyrannical. There are no parliaments or representative assemblies of any kind, no councils or communes, no chambers of nobility or estates, no municipalities in the history of Islam; nothing but the sovereign power, to which the subject owed complete and unwavering obedience as a religious duty imposed by the Holy Law. In the great days of classical Islam this duty was only owed to the lawfully appointed caliph, as God's vicegerent on earth and head of the theocratic community, and then only for as long as he upheld the law; but with the decline of the caliphate and the growth of military dictatorship, Muslim jurists and theologians accommodated their teachings to the changed situation and extended the religious duty of obedience to any effective authority, however impious, however barbarous. For the last thousand years, the political thinking of Islam has been dominated by such maxims as "tyranny is better than anarchy" and "whose power is established, obedience to him is incumbent."
...Quite obviously, the Ulama of Islam are very different from the Communist Party. Nevertheless, on closer examination, we find certain uncomfortable resemblances. Both groups profess a totalitarian doctrine, with complete and final answers to all questions on heaven and earth; the answers are different in every respect, alike only in their finality and completeness, and in the contrast they offer with the eternal questioning of Western man. Both groups offer to their members and followers the agreeable sensation of belonging to a community of believers, who are always right, as against an outer world of unbelievers, who are always wrong. Both offer an exhilarating feeling of mission, of purpose, of being engaged in a collective adventure to accelerate the historically inevitable victory of the true faith over the infidel evil-doers. The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War, two necessarily opposed groups, of which- the first has the collective obligation of perpetual struggle against the second, also has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs. There again, the content of belief is utterly different, but the aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same. The humorist who summed up the Communist creed as "There is no God and Karl Marx is his Prophet!" was laying his finger on a real affinity. The call to a Communist Jihad, a Holy War for the faith -- a new faith, but against the self-same Western Christian enemy -- might well strike a responsive note.

Bernard Lewis says Islam imposes, without limit of time or space, the duty to subjugate non-Muslims

The renowned historian of Islam and the Middle East writes on p. 73 of The Political Language of Islam:

"...it is the duty of those who have accepted them [Allah's word and message] to strive unceasingly to convert or at least to subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state.”

Bernard Lewis says that in the overwhelming majority of cases, "jihad" in Islam's core texts means military jihad

He writes on page 72 of his book The Political Language of Islam, that

...the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists [Muslim specialists in the Qur'an, hadiths, life of Muhammad, and Islamic law] ... understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.

Lewis also writes, on page 31 of his book The Crisis of Islam, that

For most of the fourteen centuries of recorded Muslim history, jihad was most commonly interpreted to mean armed struggle for the defense or advancement of Muslim power.

Bernard Lewis says Jihad is an unlimited offensive to bring the whole world under Islamic law; Christian crusades a defensive, limited response to, and imitation of, jihad

From pp.233-234 of The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2000 Years:

Even the Christian crusade, often compared with the Muslim jihad, was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation. But unlike the jihad it was concerned primarily with the defense or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory...The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived [by Muslims] as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule.… The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law.

Percentage of Honor Killings Done by Muslims

According to the article "Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings," published in the Middle East Forum, Muslims do 91 percent of honor killings worldwide and 96 percent of honor killings in Europe. If you click on the above link, those percentages can be found five paragraphs below the heading "Methodology."

Daniel Boorstin: "There is a vast difference...between the Hebrew-Christian God the Maker and the Muslim God of Fiat."

"For a believing Muslim, to create is a rash and dangerous act."

In a very short chapter of Boorstin's The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (a book that with his The Discoverers and The Seekers forms a magisterial and deservedly famous trilogy), Boorstin sought the heart of the difference between Islamic and Judeo-Christian culture. Here are some choice excerpts:

…the Muslim God, though a kind of Creator, had a character quite different from the God of the Hebrews and the Christians...[I]n the Koran the role of the Creator is transformed. The familiar words of Genesis record that God spent six days on the Creation.

[Genesis 2:2] 'And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day...'

In the Koran God never rests, for he can never be tired.

'Koran 50:38: We created the heavens and the earth and all between them in Six Days. Nor did any sense of weariness touch Us.'

It is no wonder that the Koranic God was not wearied. For He created not by making but by ordering, not by work but by command. The creation of anything occurs when He decrees it into being.

'Koran 2:117: To Him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth; when He decreeth a matter, He saith to it: "Be," and it is.'

Again and again the Koran describes God's fiat...

There are some similar expressions in Genesis of God creating by fiat...But there is a vast difference in emphasis between the acts of Creation in the Bible and in the Koran. And between the character of the Hebrew-Christian God the Maker, and the Muslim God of Fiat...

The Muslim Creator-God is notable not only, nor even mainly, for His work in the Beginning, but as an orderer, a commander, of life and death in our present. The Judeo-Christian God is awesome for the uniqueness of His work in the Beginning. Then He may intervene by divine providence...

After...the six days of fiat, the God of the Koran, having no reason to rest, simply mounted the throne of authority. From there he continued to rule by decree over life and death and every earthly act.

The relation of the Muslim God to his creature man, then, is quite unbiblical. The uniqueness of the biblical Creator-God was in his powers of making; the uniqueness of man and woman too would be in their power to imitate their God and after their fashion to exercise the power of creation. After God created the species in the Beginning, he blessed them to be fruitful and multiply...

Why did God create man? The God of the Bible would judge man by his fulfillment of his godlike image. Not so in Islam.

'Koran 51:56: I have only created jinns and men, that they may serve Me. I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship me.'

...The People of the Koran prefer to call themselves Muslims, from 'Islam,' the Arabic word for submission or obedience. The Koran repeatedly reminds us that Allah's creatures are also his 'servants' or 'slaves'. What clearer warning against reaching for the new? For a believing Muslim, to create is a rash and dangerous act.

(my bolding; Boorstin, 1992, pp.63-69.)

Core Islamic texts disagree with the Bible: human beings are not made in the image of God

For example, in Qur'an Chapter 42, Verse 11:

The Creator of the heavens and the earth. He hath made for you pairs of yourselves, and of the cattle also pairs, whereby He multiplieth you. Naught is as His likeness; and He is the Hearer, the Seer.

Compare Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 26:

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness

In the Judeo-Christian conception, human beings, made in God's likeness, are children of God the Father. In the Qur'an, Allah never calls himself "Father," and in several places denies He has any sons or daughters. Rather, human beings are only Allah's servants or slaves. "I have only created jinns and men that they may serve me (Qur'an 51:56). Even if both theologies are pure fantasy, the Islamic one leads to authoritarian social outcomes, whereas the Judeo-Christian one tends, over the long run, toward freedom.

Top Muslim expert on the Qur'an wrote that manifold discriminations against non-Muslims are required by Qur'an 9:29's command to put non-Muslims in a state of subjection

Ibn Kathir's explanation of the Qur'an is likely the most widely used in the world.

Wrote Kathir:

Paying Jizyah [protection money paid by non-Muslims to Muslim overlords] is a Sign of Kufr [unbelief] and Disgrace

Allah said, [in Qur'an 9:29]

(until they pay the Jizyah), if they do not choose to embrace Islam, (with willing submission), in defeat and subservience, (and feel themselves subdued.), disgraced, humiliated and belittled.

Kathir, having thus paraphrased part of Qur'an 9:29, continues:

Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah [non-Muslims forced to pay Muslim overlords in exchange for survival as second-class citizens] or elevate them above Muslims, for they [non-Muslims] are miserable, disgraced and humiliated. [Imam] Muslim [in his canonical hadith collection, Book 26, Number 5389] recorded from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said,

(Do not initiate the Salam [peace greeting] to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley.)

Kathir, having quoted that hadith and Qur'an 9:29, then writes:

This is why the Leader of the faithful Umar bin Al-Khattab [a companion of Muhammad, Umar became the second caliph], may Allah be pleased with him, demanded his well-known conditions be met by the Christians, these conditions that ensured their continued humiliation, degradation and disgrace.

Then Kathir refers to the Pact of Umar, which shows how Umar, the second caliph, institutionalized Qur'an 9:29's demand that non-Muslims be put in a state of subjection. Kathir writes:

The scholars of Hadith narrated from Abdur-Rahman...that he [Abdur-Rahman] said,

I recorded for Umar [the second caliph], may Allah be pleased with him, the terms of the treaty of peace he conducted with the Christians of Ash-Sham [Ash-Sham ≈ Syria.  Muhammad died in 632, and Christian Syria was the first Islamic conquest (634-636) outside Arabia]: 

[Christians were compelled to sign this:] "In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. This is a document to the servant of Allah, Umar, the Leader of the faithful, from the Christians of such and such city. When you (Muslims) came to us [Christians] we requested safety for ourselves, children, property and followers of our religion. We made a condition on ourselves that we will neither erect in our areas a monastery, church, or a sanctuary for a monk, nor restore any place of worship that needs restoration nor use any of them for the purpose of enmity against Muslims. We will not prevent any Muslim from resting in our churches whether they come by day or night, and we will open the doors [of our houses of worship] for the wayfarer and passerby. Those Muslims who come as guests, will enjoy boarding and food for three days. We will not allow a spy against Muslims into our churches and homes or hide deceit [or betrayal] against Muslims. We will not teach our children the Qur'an, publicize practices of Shirk [Shirk means polytheism and worshiping anyone (including Jesus) that Muslims believe is not God], invite anyone to Shirk, or prevent any of our fellows from embracing Islam, if they choose to do so. We will respect Muslims, move from the places we sit in if they choose to sit in them. We will not imitate their clothing, caps, turbans, sandals, hairstyles, speech, nicknames and title names, or ride on saddles, hang swords on the shoulders, collect weapons of any kind or carry these weapons. We will not encrypt our stamps in Arabic, or sell liquor. We will have the front of our hair cut, wear our customary clothes wherever we are, wear belts around our waist, refrain from erecting crosses on the outside of our churches and demonstrating them and our books in public in Muslim fairways and markets. We will not sound the bells in our churches, except discretely, or raise our voices while reciting our holy books inside our churches in the presence of Muslims, nor raise our voices [with prayer] at our funerals, or light torches in funeral processions in the fairways of Muslims, or their markets. We will not bury our dead next to Muslim dead, or buy servants who were captured by Muslims. We will be guides for Muslims and refrain from breaching their privacy in their homes."

When I [Abdur-Rahman] gave this document to Umar [second caliph], he added to it,

"We will not beat any Muslim. These are the conditions that we [Christians] set against ourselves and followers of our religion in return for safety and protection. If we break any of these promises that we set for your benefit against ourselves, then our Dhimmah (promise of protection) is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion."

Thus Qur'an 9:29, according to Ibn Kathir, who is arguably the most popular Qur'an interpreter of all time (except for Muhammad), requires what we in the United States would consider to be a sacralized form of apartheid or Jim Crow for non-Muslims. And many other Qur'an verses and canonical hadiths point in the same direction.

Islamic law, which treats non-Muslims as inferiors, is enforced to varying degrees in Muslim-majority nations, and sometimes hardly at all. Yet, as a regular stream of news stories shows, there is often what can be called an Islamic-law ethos operating even in nations where Islamic law itself is not formally enforced or present on the nation's lawbooks or constitution. I refer to a cultural sensibility that, nourished by Islamic core texts and traditions, instinctively treats non-Muslims as lesser human beings, takes advantage of them, abuses them, and prevents them from having any legal recourse against Muslim predators, since those in Muslim governments sometimes refuse to prosecute Muslim predation on non-Muslims, and police forces sometimes serve to aid and abet the predation. This happens to varying degrees in a sufficient number of Muslim-majority nations to be a grave concern to the rest of the world. And too many of the Muslims who immigrate to the West bring the Islamic-law ethos along with them.

Sorbonne Linguist finds Islam's core texts the most aggressive against other groups

Tina Magaard is a linguist who got her Ph.D. in Intercultural Communication from the Sorbonne, and did a three-year study of the original texts of the world's ten largest religions. One of her findings was that Islam's core texts are the most aggressive against other groups.