By Gufraan,
Author is an Educationist based out of Pune.
The Ideal Muslim society:
Hazrat Umar (r.a.) period 's society was an ideal. His was a society in which true freedom existed. Hazrat Umar (r.a.) did not pray in the church in Jerusalem simply because he did not want to give the later Muslims an excuse to take the church. In the History of Muslim civilization we see that even slaves have risen to high positions in the government as well as become great scholars of their era. Such an equal civilization & pure system of belief naturally spread to distant lands at an astonishing pace. In some places it spread through businessmen landing on Indian shores of Malabar and the south-east Asian countries & in some places it spread through brilliant scholars & great sufi saints who displayed remarkable nobility & integrity of character.
Infact the Golden age between 700 AD & 1500 AD was a civilization which established an equitable, egalitarian, prosperous, tolerant and educated society based on divinely ordained principles of spirituality, morality & justice in half of the known world. From the crucibles of scientific innovation in the universities of Toledo in Spain to the vast & varied libraries of Baghdad the Muslims along with Jews and Christians in Muslim lands were the pioneers in all fields of education in the time when Europe was reeling in the dark ages.
However there was no dilution of fundamental creed whatsoever. The city state of Madina during the time of the Prophet s.a.w. was truly secular in spirit inspite of its recognition of distinct identities. It gave the minorities the right to exercise not only personal but also criminal laws according to their canonical codes of jurisprudence. Oriental versions of History that revere amalgamation of creeds are often convoluted and pregnant with distinct and often subtle indoctrination of a particular ideology.
Source: Extracted from authors' discussion in a WhatsApp group.