You're viewing and judging the monarchs and rulers of the past with your democratic goggles of today.
the fact that they had armies (mind you, you cannot build an army without a consensus amongst your commanders, who agree and accept to a higher authority) who supported them, and then they had masses as well who became their subjects. A few of them were tyrants and we reject their rule. But It was an accepted reality of the time and the world was ruled by Monarchs. You can't judge their efforts or their rule using the political tools of today. They were indeed "Muslim" rulers. And they were as legitimate in governance as the democratic leaders of today.
Sparklingway:
although i did not allege that we ruled for 800 years, you should go back and read my comment again. I said the muslims back in the days invented all of those things.
Yeah, I misinterpreted your statement. It clearly didn't mention anything about rule. You said:
It is very convenient of you to point out the 200 years of history under foreign rule whilst forgetting the nearly 800 years of history where we flourished and invented music art and whatnot for the sake of preserving our civilization values and cultural heritages.
In that matter, 800 years of "brilliant" scientific contributions aren't going to help us get out of the troubles and the problems we have today, or are they? A heritage of achievement doesn't qualify us for any more achievements for we have become stagnant. The era of scientific advancement that you're referring to was more like 500 years as by the middle of the fifteenth century, the flame of innovation had died down. Major contributions, breakthroughs and advancements took place between 9th and 15th century. My ancestors are from Southwestern Asia (2000 yrs back) and I hardly share any bond with the Arabs, Turk and Persian scientists of those periods. These scientists were great people, three cheers for them but what about today?
Since the early times, infighting and quest for land and money has destroyed tho so called "Islamic World". Barbarism in the name of religion has been prevalent. Nearly everyone of the Khalifas, Sultan, Amir, Badshahs and Nizams were powerhungry rulers who squeezed every drop of blood out of their subjects. Monarchy, for me, represents the darkest periods of human civilization.
As for the dynasties, the Mughals are glorified beyond any limit in our textbooks. They must be taught as what not to become. A three century rule of utter ignorance, lack of social welfare, ignorance towards any real development or advancement and complete lack of care for the people. I'm not using the demographic goggles of today but rather trying to view them objectively. You fricking have the money and the skilled engineers/ laborers to build a beautiful tomb for your dead deer, but never though of opening a centre of learning for the people? As long as the girls waved the feathers and the king got his liquid gold milkshakes, it was great. What kind of a civilization was this? I have to give them credit for one thing , the Mughals unlike other conquerors atleast stayed back though and didn't just come here to take the money back to their homelands, they came to rule and that they did.
The subcontinent's modern history can be best summarized as : - Ruled by foreign invaders and conquerors for a long period of time and then by the British.
The foreign conquerors brought their huge armies to fight but the British didn't even bring a huge army. They just crafted one out of the same place they wanted to rule. Colonials in Africa used soldiers from different areas like soldiers from Burkina Faso to fight in Congo so that there weren't any sympathies. The subcontinent, however ethnically, linguistically and racially diverse was quite a cohesive society when the British came. Yet, they were able to find hundreds of thousands of recruits for petty exchanges of land from the plains of Punjab. We have our "khan bahadurs" who were honored for their service to the crown and our ruling class (military and civil oligarchy) rose from the very same people who committed treason against the masses. They used locals to beat locals. What kind of a moral code where the people following? It's just that the modern history of this region is filled with more dark than bright bands. Comparing this with European or Central Asian history is a lame thing to do. I don't believe in comparative morality or comparative ethics.
I'm sorry I've gone into a rant here.