Muslims in the World

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz

The Islamic Nation of Iraq
On October 3,1932 AD, Iraq was granted independence by Britain, although London did keep close control of affairs of the country it had created after World War I, until the overthrow in 1958 of the monarchy it installed in Baghdad by importing Faisal I from the Hijaz – the son of its agent Sharif Hussein.
The land of Iraq is the cradle of human civilization, and it is here the Father of the human race, Adam, as well as Prophet Noah repose in eternal peace. Throughout history the Land of the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates (Bayn an-Nahrayn or Mesopotamia) saw the rise and fall of great civilizations that contributed to the scientific progress of mankind, such as the Sumerian, the Akkadian, the Assyrian, the Chaldean, and the Babylonian.
In 539 BC, the emerging Achaemenian Empire of Iran, under Cyrus the Great, took control of Iraq, which remained in Persian hands for two centuries until their defeat by Alexander the Macedon in 331 BC in the Battle of Gaugamela near Mosul. In 247 BC, the Parthians defeated the Seleucid successors of Alexander to revive Iranian independence and a century later drove the Greeks out of Iraq, where they built their new capital, Ctesiphon (near modern Baghdad).
The Parthians were replaced in 224 AD by the Sassanid Dynasty which also maintained its capital in Ctesiphon till its fall to the Muslim Arabs in 637 AD, which means that for almost 8 hundred years this city in Iraq, also known as Mada\'en was the capital of Iranian empires, until the advent of Islam.
The greatest glory for Iraq, however, was the shifting of the Islamic capital from Medina to Kufa in 36 AH (657 AD) by the Commander of the Faithful, Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS), whose martyrdom in this land after over four years of the only instance in history of the model government of social justice further increased its significance.
Iraq is also the place where Prophet Mohammad\'s (SAWA) grandson, Imam Husain (AS), attained immortal martyrdom in Karbala in 61 AH (680 AD) during history’s most heartrending tragedy. In 132 AH (749 AD), after the end of the 90-odd years of tyranny of the Damascus-based Omayyad dynasty, Iraq once again became the centre of the Islamic world, with the shifting of the capital to Hirah by the equally oppressive Abbasid caliphs, who built Baghdad in 145 AH (762 AD) on the Iranian model as the new capital.
With the weakening of Abbasid rule, Iraq became part of the empire of the Iranian Buwaihid dynasty in 945 AD, and 110 years later in 1055 AD it became part of the Iran-based Seljuqid Empire. In 1258 AD Baghdad was sacked by the Mongol hordes of Hulagu Khan and along with the rest of Iraq was part of the Iran-based Ilkhanid Empire for the next century.
Thereafter, it was contested by the Iran-based Turkic dynasties such as the Timurids, the Qara Qoyounlu, and the Aq Qoyounlu, until the emergence of the Safavids of Iran who made it part of the Persian Empire once again, before Shah Tahmasb lost it to the Ottoman Turks of Sultan Sulayman.
Shah Abbas I retook Iraq, while his successor lost it to the Turks. It was hotly contested by the Iranians and the Ottomans and the last Iranian king to hold Iraq was Nader Shah until his assassination in 1747. In 1917, with the defeat of the Ottomans during World War I it passed into British hands.
Today, after the end of the 35-year reign of terror of the tyrannical Ba\'th minority regime, Iraq is once again independent under an elected government, supported by the majority of people. Modern Iraq covers an area of more than 438,000 sq km. It shares borders with Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. It is worth noting that according to Islamic prophecies, in the end times, Kufa in Iraq, will be the seat of the global government of the Prophet’s 12th and Last Infallible Successor, Imam Mahdi (may God hasten his reappearance).

Islam in Tibet
On October 7, 1950 AD, a year after establishment of the communist system, China seized Tibet, and nine years later crushed the uprising of the Tibetan people, forcing the Dalai Lama or the Buddhist religious-political to seek refuge in India, where he is still based.
Tibet covers an area of almost 1.2 million sq km, and is administered as an autonomous region in China. Muslims have been living in Tibet since as early as the 8th or 9th century. In Tibetan cities, there are small communities of Muslims, known as Kachee (Kache), who trace their origin to immigrants from three main regions: Kashmir (Kachee Yul in ancient Tibetan), Ladakh and the Central Asian countries.
Islamic influence in Tibet also came from Iran. After 1959 a group of Tibetan Muslims made a case for Indian nationality based on their historic roots to Kashmir and the Indian government declared all Tibetan Muslims Indian citizens later that year.
Other Muslim ethnic groups who have long inhabited Tibet include Hui, Salar, Dongxiang and Bonan. There is also a well established Chinese Muslim community (gya kachee), which traces its ancestry back to the Hui ethnic group of China.

Genocide of Muslims in Greece
On September 23, 1821 AD, the massacre of Tripolitsa occurred in Greece, during which Greek Christians mercilessly killed 30,000 Muslim men, women and children, as well as the small Jewish minority. So bloodcurdling was the genocide that for three days, the Greeks slaughtered Turks including women and children during the revolt in the Ottoman Province of Yunanistan.
Within a few years all traces of four centuries of Turkish rule of Greece were obliterated through barbaric crimes by the Christians who destroyed mosques, converted many into churches and massacred or expelled ethnic Greek Muslims.
British historian of the Greek Revolt, W. Alison Phillips, has noted: \"…the other atrocities of Greeks paled before the awful scenes which followed the storming of Tripolitsa. For three days the miserable inhabitants were given over to lust and cruelty of a mob of savages. Neither gender nor age was spared. Women and children were tortured before being put to death. So great was the slaughter that from the gate to the citadel the hoofs of horses never touched the ground. At the end of two days, the wretched remnants of the Musalmans were deliberately collected, to the number of some two thousand souls, of every age and sex, but principally women and children, were led out to a ravine in the neighboring mountains and there butchered like cattle.\"
Another historian William St. Clair writes about the genocide of Muslims in Greece: \"Their arms and legs were cut off and they were slowly roasted over fires. Pregnant women were cut open, their heads cut off, and dogs\' heads stuck between their legs. From Friday to Sunday the air was filled with the sound of screams... One Greek boasted that he personally killed ninety people. The Jewish colony was systematically tortured... For weeks afterwards starving Turkish children running helplessly about the ruins were being cut down and shot at by exultant Greeks.\"

Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, the British paid agent who occupied Hejaz Muqaddas
On September 23, 1932 AD, the British allowed their agent, Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, to name a large part of the Arabian Peninsula that he had usurped through wars, bloodshed, and subterfuge, as “Saudi Arabiaâ€‌ – the only place in the world where the name of a tribal minority has been applied to a country.
Abdul-Aziz was from Najd in the desert interior, where to advance his political goals he had allied himself with the schismatic Wahhabi cult, whose aim was to deceive and divide Muslims. He was promptly hired by the British against the Ottoman Empire on a monthly salary of 5,000 pound-sterling.
With the defeat of the Turks in World War I, he was emboldened to raid other parts of Arabia, and after overcoming the Aal-e Rashid ruling clan, in 1925 he invaded Hijaz, where he massacred tens of thousands of Muslims in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the port city of Jeddah, as well as in Yanbu’ and Ta’ef.
He desecrated and destroyed the sacred shrines in Mecca and Medina, and seized Najran and other areas from the Zaidi Imam of Yemen, followed by attacks on the independent Shi’ite Muslim sheikhdoms of the oil-rich eastern parts of Arabia on the Persian Gulf.
The British now decided to dump their other agent, Sharif Hussain of Hijaz, whose two sons, Faisal and Abdullah, they had installed as kings in Iraq and the newly created entity called Jordan, respectively. They thus gave the green signal to Abdul-Aziz to assume the title of king and call the territories he had usurped as Saudi Arabia, but not before taking a pledge from him against opposing their plan to set up the illegal Zionist state in Palestine.
It is widely believed that the Aal-e Saud clan is descended from the Jewish tribes which in the course of history were Arabicized and became Muslim. Interestingly, the Saudi regime has never supplied any weapons or backed any Palestinian group opposed to the illegal existence of Israel.
As a matter of fact, the Wahhabis, who are notorious for their enmity towards the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt, and finance terrorist groups such as al-Qa’eda, Takfiris, Salafis, etc, to preach hatred and kill Muslims, have never posed any threat to the Zionists.

Muslims in Mumbai
On November 23, 1665 AD, Charles II of England commissioned Abraham Shipman to formally take over Mumbai (Bombay) from the Portuguese, following orders issued earlier on August 16 by the King of Portugal, Alfonso VI, to his viceroy in India to cede the seven-island archipelago as part of the dowry of his sister, Catherine of Braganza, who was married to the English monarch in 1661. Known as Heptanesia (Cluster of Seven Islands) to the Greek geographer Ptolemy in 150 CE, in the 3rd century BC, the islands had formed part of the Mauryan Empire, during its expansion and served as an important centre of Buddhism in Western India.
Subsequently, they came under the control of successive indigenous dynasties before being ruled from 810 to 1260 by the Silharas, who built the Jogeshwari Caves and Elephanta Caves. The Khalji Sultanate annexed the islands which were under Delhi’s rule until 1407 through its Muslim Governors of Gujarat, who then ruled independently, building many mosques, especially the shrine at Worli in honour of Iranian saint of Central Asia Haji Ali Bukhari in 1431. From 1429 onwards, the islands were a source of contention between the Gujarat Sultanate and the Bahmani Sultanate of Iranian origin of the Deccan.
In 1493, Bahadur Khan Gilani failed to secure Mumbai for the Bahmanis. Gujarat’s Sultan Bahadur Shah, growing apprehensive of the power of the Mughal emperor Humayun, signed the Treaty of Bassein with the Portuguese and on 25 October 1535 formally handed them the seven islands which became a centre of Christianity. Following the British takeover, the islands were frequently raided until 1735 by the Siddis (Abyssinian Muslimss) of Janjira, beginning with Siddi Sambhal’s changing of sides in 1672 from the Bijapur Sultanate to Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who used them to check the Marathas of Sivaji. The British also made sure the Marathas do not infiltrate the seven islands.
From 1782 onwards, the British city of Bombay started taking formal shape, and with the defeat in 1817 of Baji Rao II, the last of the Maratha Peshwas, the islands were saved from Maratha raids. By 1845, the seven islands coalesced into a single landmass by the Hornby Vellard Project via large scale land reclamation.
On 16 April 1853, India\'s first passenger railway line was established, connecting Bombay to the neighbouring town of Thane. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 transformed Bombay into one of the largest seaports on the Arabian Sea. Today, Mumbai is the commercial capital of India and has evolved into a global financial hub.
According to the 2011 census the population was 12,479,608, of which 25 percent are Muslims. The city is also home to the largest population of Zoroastrians in the world, numbering about 80,000, who are known as Parsi and whose ancestors had migrated from Iran. The Marathas are relative newcomers to this cosmopolitan city which is also home to hundreds of thousands of people of Iranian origin, including the Iranian Muslims from Yazd (Iran) who came last century and are mainly in the restaurant and tea industry.

The founder of the Ming Dynasty in China who greatly praised Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAWA)
On October 21, 1328 AD, Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty (in 1368), who liberated China from the rule of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, was born in a peasant family. Also known as Hongwu, he rose to command the forces that seized the Mongol capital Khanbaliq (modern Beijing).
During his 30-year rule, he transformed China into a major power, and although born a Buddhist, he embraced the Confucian doctrine, and showed inclination towards Islam.
He ordered the construction of several mosques in Nanjing, Yunnan, Guangdong, Xijing and Fujian, and had inscriptions praising Holy Prophet Mohammad (SAWA) placed in them.
He rebuilt the Jinjue Mosque in his capital Nanjing, and large numbers of the Muslim Hui people moved to the city during his rule. He had some ten Muslim generals in his military, including Chang Yuchun, Lan Yu, Ding Dexing, Mu Ying, Feng Sheng and Hu Dahai.
He personally wrote a 100-word praise (baizizan) on Islam, Allah and Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAWA).