"The important question as to whether a country in the position of Hindustan may be considered a Daru l-Islam or a Daru l-harb has been fully discussed by Dr. W. W. Hunter of the Bengal Civil Service, in his work entitles Indian Musulmans which is the result of careful inquiry as to the necessary conditions of Jihad, or a Crescentade instituted at the time of the excitment which existed in India in 1870-71, in consequence of a Wahhabi conspiracy for the overthrow of Christian rule in that country. The whole matter, according to the Sunni Mussalmans, hinges upon the question of whether India is Daru l-harb, "a land of warfare," or a Daru l-Islam, "a land of Islam". The Muftis belonging to the Hanifi and Shafii sects at Makkah decided that, "as long as even some of the peculiar observances of Islam prevails in a country, it is Daru l-Islam." The decision of the Mufti of the Maliki sect was very similar, being to the following effect. "A country does not become Daru l-harb as soon as it passes into the hands of the infidels, but when all or most of the injunctions of Islam disappear therefrom." The law doctors of North India decided that, "the absence of protection and liberty to Musulmans is essential in a Jihad, or religious war, and also that there should be a probability of victory to the armies of Islam."
Islam is India's second-largest religion, with 14.2% of the country's population, or approximately 172.2 million people, identifying as adherents of Islam in a 2011 census. India has the third-largest number of Muslims in the world. Most of India's Muslims are Sunni, with Shia making up about 15% of the Muslim population.
"In six decades (1881-1941)… at no census have the Muslims failed to improve their percentage and the Hindus failed to lose…” [It is due not only to the] “proportion of Muslim women married, but those who are married also have a higher fertility.”"
"It was aristocratic on the part of the orthodox Muslim to feel that he was in India, but not of it. He durst not strike his roots deep into the native soil. He must import traditions, language and culture. His civil and criminal law must be derived from the writings of jurists and the decisions of judges in Baghdad and Cairo. The Muslim in India was an intellectual exotic; he considered it infra dig to adapt himself to his environment."
"In Saudi Arabia, there is peace but no freedom. In Pakistan, there is freedom but there is no peace. In India, Muslims enjoy both peace and freedom."
"Judged by a similar standard, the patronage and cultivation of Hindu learning by the Muslims, or their contribution to the development of Hindu culture during their rule ... pales into insignificance when compared with the achievements of the British rule.... It is only by instituting such comparison that we can make an objective study of the condition of the Hindus under Muslim rule, and view it in its true perspective."
"Still less can we hand over to their unfettered sway those helpless millions they despise. Side by side with this Brahmin theocracy and the immense Hindu population – angelic and untouchable castes alike – there dwell in India seventy millions of Moslems, a race of far greater physical vigour and fierceness, armed with a religion which lends itself only too readily to war and conquest. While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the Moslem sharpens his sword. Between these two races and creeds, containing as they do so many gifted arid charming beings in all the glory of youth, there is no intermarriage. The gulf is impassable. If you took the antagonisms of France and Germany, and the antagonisms of Catholics and Protestants, and compounded them and multiplied them ten-fold, you would not equal the division which separates these two races intermingled by scores of millions in the cities and plains of India. But over both of them the impartial rule of Britain has hitherto lifted its appeasing sceptre. Until the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms began to raise the question of local sovereignty and domination, they had got used to dwelling side by side in comparative toleration. But step by step, as it is believed we are going to clear out or be thrust out of India, so this tremendous rivalry and hatred of races springs into life again. It is becoming more acute every day. Were we to wash our hands of all responsibility and divest ourselves of all our powers, as our sentimentalists desire, ferocious civil wars would speedily break out between the Moslems and the Hindus. No one who knows India will dispute this."
"Direct conversions at the beginning must have been rare; an early report, quoted by a tenth-century Arab geographer, complains that Islam had not made a single convert in India."