Mohamed Miah | The Narratives
When Empires Erase and Faith Restores
I trace the universal pattern of genocide and the spiritual resistance that endures. From the Ainu to the Aboriginals, from Palestine to Kashmir, the world keeps repeating the same sin.
Empires erase. Faith remembers.
They All Called It Progress
Every empire writes the same lie.
They say they are bringing civilisation, order, and development.
But beneath the paperwork and the polished slogans lies the same disease — the erasure of people.
From Japan’s Ainu to Australia’s Aboriginals, from Canada’s First Nations to the Māori of New Zealand, from the Rohingya of Myanmar to the Palestinians of Gaza — the pattern never changes.
Every conquest begins with a story: We are saving them.
Every atrocity ends with another: It’s time to move on.
Japan’s Hidden Genocide – The Ainu
In 1899 Japan passed The Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act — a law that pretended to “protect” the Ainu while erasing them.
It banned their language, outlawed their rituals, and turned them into land-less farmers on stolen soil.
The title itself — Former Aborigines — was the crime in plain sight: it declared they no longer existed.
Japan only recognised the Ainu as Indigenous in 2008 (The Guardian, 2008) and enacted limited protections in 2019 (Reuters, 2019).
The myth of an ethnically “pure” Japan was built on the bones of a forgotten people.
Australia’s Stolen Generations
From the early 1900s until the 1970s, Australia’s governments removed Aboriginal children from their families to “civilise” them.
The Bringing Them Home inquiry of 1997 recorded the agony:
“Our life pattern was created by the government policies and are forever with me, as though an invisible anchor around my neck.”
By the UN’s own definition — the forcible transfer of children from one group to another — it was genocide.
An apology came in 2008 (BBC, 2008).
Justice never did.
Canada, the Americas, and the Cross of Conversion
In Canada, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced into church-run residential schools.
Their hair was cut, their tongues beaten for speaking Cree or Ojibwe.
Thousands died; hundreds of graves are still being found (Al Jazeera, 2023).
Prime Minister Trudeau admitted:
“It was a policy that attempted to eliminate Indigenous peoples as distinct nations and cultures.”
Across the border, U.S. policy said it outright:
“Kill the Indian, save the man.” — Captain Richard H. Pratt
Further south, the Taíno, Aztec, and Inca were baptised with blood.
Temples became cathedrals.
The cross arrived with the cannon — and they still call it discovery.
New Zealand – The Treaty that Lied
In 1840, the British Crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the Māori.
One version promised partnership; the English text delivered control.
Within decades, Māori land was seized, their language banned in schools, their identity reduced to folklore.
Revival came only after near extinction — the same pattern of theft followed by token apology.
The Living Genocides Rohingya and Palestine
In 2017, Myanmar’s army burned the villages of the Rohingya, killing thousands and driving 700,000 into Bangladesh.
The UN Fact-Finding Mission found “consistent patterns of serious human-rights violations … including acts that may amount to genocide.” (UNHRC, 2018).
And in Palestine, the erasure is older but ongoing.
The Nakba of 1948 expelled 750,000 Palestinians and destroyed over 400 villages (UNISPAL).
The justification today is called security; the method is still occupation.
India The New Student of the Old Playbook
Now the same script is being rehearsed in India — a land once conquered but never cured of its colonial hangover.
Hindu-nationalist politics has learned the empire’s language:
- Rewrite history, glorify one race and faith.
- Erase minorities, by law and by mob.
- Occupy Kashmir, silence dissent, jail journalists.
- Citizenship laws, bulldozer justice, and the quiet persecution of Muslims and Christians under the banner of nationalism.
The British divided India by religion; modern politicians kept the tools and changed the flag.
From banning beef to demolishing mosques, it is the same performance — one empire replaced by another, both feeding on fear.
How India Turned the Mughals into Monsters
To complete its script of division, modern India has learned not only the empire’s tactics but its propaganda.
Hindu-nationalist historians have taken a chapter of extraordinary coexistence — the Mughal era — and rewritten it as a thousand-year nightmare.
They omit that Akbar abolished the jizya, invited Hindu, Jain, and Christian thinkers to debate in his court, and appointed Hindu generals to the highest ranks.
They forget that Jahangir and Shah Jahan funded temples, or that Aurangzeb, though strict, employed more Hindus in government than any ruler before him.
Colonial Britain first painted the “Muslim tyrant” myth to justify its own conquest; today’s nationalists have simply changed the uniform.
By vilifying the Mughals, they sanctify their own rule and keep Muslims as permanent outsiders in a land that has always been shared.
Why the Lie Persists
Because unity is dangerous to those who govern through fear.
The Mughals ruled a subcontinent where temples and mosques rose under the same sky; where Persian poets wrote in Sanskrit metres; where art, science and faith cross-pollinated.
That memory threatens every demagogue who survives on hate, so they smother it with revision.
They burn books, not because of what they contain, but because of what they remind people of — a time when India was whole.
And so, the empire that claimed to free India from the Mughals has been reborn in saffron, proving again that oppression doesn’t vanish; it mutates.
Empire vs Islam
Those empires conquered to own.
Islam defended to preserve.
When the Prophet ﷺ fought, it was after years of torture and exile.
When he conquered Makkah, he forgave his oppressors:
“Go, for you are free.”
When Caliph Umar (RA) ruled, he told his generals:
“Do not kill women, children or monks. Do not destroy fruit-bearing trees.”
When Sultan Mehmet II entered Constantinople, he protected the Christian population and reopened their patriarchate.
When Salahuddin Ayyubi reclaimed Jerusalem, he nursed Crusader wounded and spared their priests.
Islamic wars were fought for defence, survival, and justice, not empire.
They preserved life where empires sought plunder.
That is why, from Indonesia to Senegal, Islam spread without invasion — through merchants, scholars, and Sufi saints who carried honesty in trade and light in character.
No armies ever reached Java, Zanzibar or Guangzhou, yet Islam did — because truth walks where swords cannot.
Faith vs Empire
Empires looted, divided, and enslaved.
Islam built wells, schools, and hearts.
Empires erased memory; Islam preserved names.
Empires conquered bodies; Islam conquered arrogance.
The Qur’an commands:
“Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress.” (2:190)
“There is no compulsion in religion.” (2:256)
Two verses that dismantle centuries of propaganda.
The sword defended faith; it never imposed it.
The Weakness of the Many
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ warned of a time when his ummah would be vast in number but hollow in strength:
“The nations will call one another to attack you as eaters call one another to their dish.”
They asked, “Will we be few in number, O Messenger of Allah?”
He replied, “No, you will be many on that day, but you will be like the foam upon the sea. Allah will remove fear of you from your enemies and cast weakness into your hearts.”
They asked, “What is that weakness, O Messenger of Allah?”
He said, “Love of the world and hatred of death.” — Sunan Abu Dawud 4297
Look around, and it reads like today’s headline.
Billions of Muslims, yet powerless before tyranny — because we traded courage for comfort and unity for ego.
A Call to Remember
Empires fall.
Faith remains.
Our duty isn’t just to mourn the erased, but to protect the living — to speak when silence becomes sin.
The Qur’an tells us not to be neutral before injustice, and the Prophet ﷺ showed us mercy even in victory.
That balance — of truth and compassion — is what separates the believer from the conqueror.
If the world insists on repeating genocide, then let our generation repeat remembrance.
Because when memory dies, tyranny wins.
And when truth is spoken — even by one heart — the darkness trembles.
© Mohamed Miah | The Narratives
Further Reading
- The Guardian — Japan recognises Ainu as Indigenous people (2008)
- Reuters — Japan passes law to protect Ainu culture (2019)
- BBC — Australia apologises to Stolen Generations (2008)
- Al Jazeera — Canada’s Indigenous Day of Truth and Reconciliation (2023)
- UNHRC — Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (2018)
- UNISPAL — The Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe (UN Archive)
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