By Asim Iftikhar
A review of the past three centuries reveals a bitter truth: the West wielded a double-edged sword against the Muslim world. One edge struck the minds of Muslims, reshaping their tastes, habits, and perspectives; the other ravaged their bodies through armies, coercive laws, famine, bombing, and genocide.
The assault on the mind was carried out via institutions such as schools, universities, courts, police, and banks. Their structures and curriculums were so crafted as to produce a generation that was Muslim in name, yet Western in thought, preference, and decision-making. This was a generation taught to be ashamed of its own civilization, considering Western standards the true measure of success.
The **assault on the body** began with the arrival of colonial armies in our cities and neighborhoods. From the fields of Algeria to the famine-stricken villages of Bengal, from the graveyards of Bosnia to the dust of Gaza, the Muslim body has been drenched in blood. Sometimes this carnage came by gun and cannon, sometimes by hunger and disease, and today, it continues in the form of drones, bombing, and sanctions.
In the mid-19th century, Lord Macaulay—the architect of British educational policy in the subcontinent—devised a plan that remains foundational to our intellectual trajectory today. In his famous “Minute on Education” (1835), Macaulay wrote that India needed “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, opinions, morals, and intellect.” This was not just a statement—it was a declaration of civilizational engineering. After this, universities were established in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras in 1857, with the aim to create an administrative class that would think and decide according to English law, Western political economy, and European literature. As a result, Arabic, Persian, Islamic jurisprudence, and thought were pushed out of the center of learning. Interestingly, science was largely excluded from these curricula, as the colonial powers wanted locals who would help run the empire but not learn those disciplines that could lead to true empowerment. Importantly, it was not just subjects that were changed—the very measures of “virtue” and “success” were rewritten. Eloquence now meant English accent, wisdom meant understanding English law, and progress meant imitation of the English way of life.
Colonial law did not just define crimes and punishments, but acted as a moral code as well. The Indian Penal Code of 1860, drafted by Macaulay, became law across the subcontinent. Its foundations were laid upon a concept of the “individual” divorced from religious purpose or revelation, and yoked solely to the commands of the state. Even today, the idea of secularism and exclusion of God from law is evident throughout the subcontinent’s legal systems.
After the 1857 War of Independence, the Police Act of 1861 was introduced, turning police into an instrument of popular control. Its framework protected “secular discipline” rather than religious or moral order, granting officers almost unchecked authority. The colonial legacy echoes in today’s police systems of South Asia.
Thus, the schools instilled a concept of “progress,” and the police stations a concept of “obedience,” both of which gradually seeped into minds: local traditions became mere customs, Qur’anic and Prophetic commands were relegated to personal matters, and true reality was defined by what was written in the statute books.
Western hegemony over the mind came not just through books, but also through economics, markets, and banking. The Bank of Calcutta, established in 1806 (later Bank of Bengal), and subsequent banks in Bombay and Madras, eventually merged into the Imperial Bank of India in 1921 and later became the State Bank of India in 1955. These institutions normalized usury-based economics, where time gained value and debt became central to life. Colonial laws such as the Permanent Settlement of 1793 imprisoned farmers in cycles of debt and forced cash crop cultivation. The farmer’s dream was transformed from good yield to good price and the next loan installment. This was not just a financial shift but a fundamental change in moral priorities: honesty came to mean timely interest payments, and progress meant greater borrowing capacity.
Another aspect of colonial psychological engineering was to render the Muslim’s outward identity suspect, or at least a sign of backwardness. During the colonial period, large segments of Muslims considered embracing Western ways a mark of dignity and advancement, but a resistant minority struggled to retain a fractured cultural identity. Yet, even this broken religious/cultural identity is unacceptable to the West today. Recent examples are evident: France’s 2004 law banning conspicuous religious symbols in public schools, and the 2023 ban on the abaya; Britain’s “Prevent” policy and other Western “counter-extremism” programs have targeted Muslim youth globally—sending the clear message: keep your religious affiliation and political opinions private, lest you be deemed a threat.
Just as the minds of Muslims were disfigured through colonial education, law, policing, and banking, their bodies too became targets of violence. The difference, however, is that while psychological manipulation occurred in classrooms and courtrooms, physical torment was delivered through guns, cannons, prisons, famines, and genocide. This is no old tale consigned to history—it remains a blood-soaked reality to this day. The methods may have changed, but the motives and targets remain unchanged. The colonial eras of the 19th and 20th centuries overflow with brutal examples: whenever Muslim populations rejected Stockholm syndrome and refused to bow before imperial authority, efforts were made to wipe them off the face of the earth.
In Algeria and other African countries, massacres and atrocities during the era of colonial occupation form a bloody chain—manifestations of the same colonial mindset across periods and geographies. From the very beginning of the French occupation of Algeria, civilian settlements were targeted. On April 6, 1832, near Albiro-Harrach, the Ouafia tribe was attacked—with nearly 100 killed, including women, children, and the elderly; only a handful of children survived. Between 1830 and 1847, French military campaigns ravaged thousands of villages, seized lands, and forcibly deported citizens. A horrific repeat occurred on May 8, 1945, as World War II ended, when Algerians in Setif, Guelma, and Kherrata, raising slogans of freedom, were indiscriminately gunned down. French sources cite thousands dead; Algerian sources estimate 45,000 deaths. The Phillipeville (Skikda) events of August 1955 saw thousands of civilians killed in French reprisals following FLN attacks, while during the siege of Laghouat in 1852, 2,000–3,000 including women and children died. Similar colonial repression swept West and Central Africa. In 1944, returning African soldiers demanding rightful wages in Senegal’s Thiaroye were met with a bloody crackdown. In Niger in 1899, the so-called “Mission Afrique Centrale” murdered thousands and razed villages. In 1950, police fired on political protests in Dimbokro, Ivory Coast, killing and wounding dozens.
In South Asia, the 1857 War of Independence and subsequent British military operations drenched much of North India—especially Delhi, Oudh, Kanpur, and Lucknow—in blood. Modern research and official/unofficial estimates suggest as many as 800,000 Indians died during the uprising and in the famines and epidemics that soon followed. In Oudh alone, around 150,000 were slain—including 100,000 ordinary civilians, defenseless villagers and townsfolk. The siege of Delhi (June 8 to September 21, 1857) ended with British troops ransacking the city for days—first by the soldiers then systematically by “prize agents” seeking treasure. Thousands of civilians were killed. The scholar William Dalrymple, in “The Last Mughal,” described this as a campaign of looting and murder, destroying the city’s intellectual, religious, and civic life.
The British policy’s most terrifying tool was execution by cannon. In 1857–58, this punishment was meted out at several places. The official report from Peshawar (May–September 1857) records 523 executions: 459 shot, 20 hanged, and 44 blown from cannons. Freedom fighters met the same fate in Agra and Indore. This wasn’t mere revenge—it was calculated colonial terror. The policy continued, for example, with Deputy Commissioner J.L. Cowan, who, on January 17–18, 1872 in Malerkotla, ordered at least 49 (some accounts say 68) Namdhari/Kuka Sikhs summarily executed by cannon—now recorded in British legal history as a massacre.
Kanpur also saw mass reprisal killings adopted as policy. After the Bibighar incident, British forces imposed collective punishments—local prisoners were made to lick blood-soaked walls before being hanged or blown up by cannon. All of this violence was designed as “lesson” and “warning.” In Delhi and Oudh’s villages, General Neill’s “punishment army” burned villages and hanged villagers. Mass hangings and destruction along the Grand Trunk Road were part of this strategy.
This oppression wasn’t limited to 1857–58. Later decades followed similar policies. On January 28, 1894, in Patharghat, Assam, a peaceful farmers’ protest against extortionate rents was attacked with batons and gunfire: official records cite 15 dead and 37 wounded; unofficial accounts say up to 140 were killed. Thus it is dubbed “Assam’s Jallianwala Bagh.” The peak of this intimidation strategy was April 13, 1919, at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, when Brigadier General Dyer ordered his troops to fire into a trapped, peaceful crowd, killing 379 and wounding 1,500 according to official figures—other reports estimate over 1,000 deaths.
Looting was no accident—it was a military operation. After capturing Delhi, open looting lasted for days, followed by prize agents collecting and selling plunder. As a result, much of Delhi and Lucknow’s manuscripts and intellectual treasures ended up in British libraries, while local families were impoverished. Scholars and spiritual leaders were especially targeted; some were hanged, others exiled to the Andaman Islands (“Kala Pani”). Hundreds of religious and political leaders were executed or exiled to deprive the public of leadership.
The Bengal famine of 1943 stands among the most tragic chapters of colonial India—directly caused by British war-time policies, forced grain exports, and misallocation of agricultural resources during World War II. After the Japanese captured Burma, the British used a “denial policy” to remove vast rice stocks from Bengal’s coast, supposedly to prevent enemy access—but this led to severe local shortages. War-time priorities disrupted transport and trade, starving rural areas. Consequently, 3–4million people died of hunger, disease, and weakness—most were women and children. The British government refused prompt aid and dismissed the famine as a “natural disaster,” absolving itself of blame.
Even after the departure of empire, this pattern did not end. Oppression continued with new excuses, new treaties, and new allies. In Bosnia, between 1992–1995, Serb forces massacred thousands of Muslim men in Srebrenica and sent women and children to camps—this happened in the heart of Europe, under UN presence, yet is still dismissed as a mere “war tragedy.”
War on Terror and Continued Violence
Over the past two decades, military operations under the “War on Terror” have written new chapters of human tragedy in the Middle East. Since 9/11, wars initiated by the US and allies in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan have resulted in catastrophic human and financial losses. According to Brown University’s Watson Institute’s Costs of War Project, between 2001 and 2023, approximately 940,000 people were killed in conflict zones—including over 432,000 civilians. In Iraq, deaths from 2003–2006 exceeded 601,000; from March 2003 to October 2018, the toll ranged from 268,000–295,000, with more than 182,000 civilians. Yemen’s war since 2014 claimed about 259,000 lives by 2020; among them, 130,000 died due to famine, disease, and the destruction of basic infrastructure. Over 3,000 children died in fighting, with mortality rates among those under five reaching 70%. In Syria, between 2011 and March 2025, between 580,000 and 656,000 people died, including at least 231,000 civilians, 26,300 children, and more than 16,000 women. Civil war displaced some 14million people, more than half the population. Even in recent years, such ongoing violence persists—such as between March and May 2025, when US airstrikes in Yemen killed 224 civilians, matching the total civilian deaths in two decades of US strikes. Across all these wars, four major crises consistently emerge: mass killing of children, women, and the elderly; destruction of homes and communities; famine and epidemics arising from ruined infrastructure; and the persistent violation of human rights due to lack of justice or international support. These atrocities not only reveal the brutality of military operations but also expose how “democratic intervention” and “War on Terror” narratives are used as tools for cultural supremacy and long-term occupation.
Islam Reigns 