Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Page 75 MA : The female captives, in compliance with Quranic sanctions and prophetic traditions, were used as sex-slaves by their Muslim masters (see Chapter VII on Slavery).
Therefore, they did not only add to the growing Muslim population, but also became valuable tools for expanding the Muslim populace through procreation. When those women, especially the ones of childbearing age, were taken away, the Hindu men, who had fled, came back to find that their women and children gone. As a result, they did not have sufficient partners for the procreation.
That means, wherever Muslims made a successful assault, procreation in the Hindu community dropped sharply. On the other hand, the few thousand Muslim soldiers who came to India with Muhammad bin Qasim had plenty of sex-partners for reproduction to the maximum capacity. Even Emperor Akbar had amassed 5,000 beautiful women in his harem. Sultan Moulay Ismail of Morocco (r. 1672ā1727) had sired about 1,200 children through his 2,000ā4,000 thousand wives and sex-slaves.
The extensive enslavement of the vanquished Hindus, particularly the womenāwho were engaged in the breeding of Muslim childrenāhelped the rapid growth of the Muslim populace. Therefore, wherever Muslims made successful inroads, they reduced the Hindu population directly by slaughtering the men in large numbers and taking away the women and children as captives. It indirectly reduced the Hindu populace by rendering the remnant Hindu men unprocreative by depriving them of childbearing female partners.
Since those women became the vehicle for breeding Muslim offspring instead, the final result was a reduction of the Hindu populace and a sharp rise in the number of Muslims. The growing Muslim population was to be maintained by the toiling of the vanquished Hindus, subjected to grinding taxes. This is roughly the same protocol, which was applied on the Jews of Banu Qurayza and Khaybar. Qasimās three-year-long exploits in India, therefore, not only added a few hundred thousand Hindus to the fold of Islam instantly through enslavement, but the enslaved women also acted as the vehicle of reproduction, swelling the Muslim populace in lips and bounds.
This protocol was applied by Muslim invaders and rulers everywhere; in India, Emperor Akbar banned the practice in 1564 although rather unsuccessfully. In his expeditions to India, Sultan Mahmud slaughtered the men in large numbers and carried away a great multitude of mainly women and children as slaves. Al-Utbi records that Sultan Mahmud had taken 500,000 people captives in his campaign of 1001ā02. In his assault in Ninduna (Punjab), he captured so many slaves that āthey became very cheap...,ā wrote an elated al-Utbi. In Thanesar (Haryana), Mahmud enslaved 200,000 and returned with 53,000 slaves in 1019.