Between the 11th and the 13th centuries, the Jats became essentially a farming population, taking advantage in the growth of irrigation. As these Jats became farmers, they started accepting Islam.
For this purpose, claim many Punjabis, their forefathers embraced Islam to gain power from the victorious Muslim invaders. They also believe that their ancestors were impressed by the fighting abilities of the Turks and for this reason embraced their religion.
Initially, some Jats started to follow the teachings of Guru Nanak, which did much to remove social barriers created by the sāvarṇa caste society. Jats were previously indifferent towards deep religious affairs.
Rajputs converted to Islam due to many reasons including physical or economic duress,[3][full citation needed] pragmatism and patronage such as social mobility among the Muslim ruling elite or for relief from Jazia taxes for being a non-Muslim ( Dhimmi ),[3][full citation needed][4] as a socio-cultural process of ...
Islam first arrived in the Punjab region following the conquest of Sindh by Muhammad bin Qasim in 712. The first permanent Muslim conquest of the Punjab was carried out by Mahmud Ghaznavi who made the whole of the Punjab a province of his empire with the headquarters at Lahore.
The religion of Sikhism emerged in the context of medieval India, where many Hindus and Muslims of the Punjab region became Sikhs through conversion. The original Sikhs were thus all converts, with the first one being Bhai Mardana, a former Muslim.
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in Punjab.
Many of them converted to Islam to escape Hindu upper-caste oppression.
Khan in Caste System
Khan has no connection to the caste system nor it defines the hereditary of a person's class or position in society.
Individuals are motivated to convert for many reasons: some relate to personal transformation and identity, others to external social and political factors. Theological explanations are often given, and many converts consider themselves destined or called by God to turn to Islam.
They are found primarily throughout Sindh, Pakistan and Punjab region of Pakistan. Jats began converting to Islam from the early Middle Ages onward, and constitute a distinct sub-group within the diverse community of Jat people.
The Jaipur artillery had lagged behind, causing their first attack to be repulsed by the Bharatpur army. Jats, hoping to escape from the battlefield, entered a narrow pass ahead of them. In the middle of the pass, the Kachwaha cavalry overtook them.
The Jats represent one of the largest ethnic groups that has evolved in the northwest region of the Indian subcontinent—India and Pakistan—over several thousand years. Since the partition of India in 1947, Hindu and Sikh Jats have lived primarily in India, and the Muslim Jats have lived primarily in Pakistan.
Ever since the founding of the faith more than 500 years ago, Sikhs have used 'Allah' to refer to God as well as many other terms. The word 'Allah' appears repeatedly in their Holy Book. The religion is epitomised by the Mool Mantar that appears as the first verse in the Sikh Holy Book.
'Islam is the oldest religion in the world, founded by Adam, and it was reborn with Abraham and a second time with Muhammad. Between Abraham and Muhammad, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity emerged in this order. Then Sikhism emerged after the time of Muhammad.
In the 19th century, even the Bengal court peons of the lower castes adopted the title "Singh". Bhumihars, who originally used Brahmin surnames, also started affixing Singh to their names.
Shaikh's who belong to Haideri, Siddiqui, Osmani, Abbasi, Hashmi and Sayyid but use their surname as Shaikh are also Quraishi as they belong to Quraish tribe.
A Khan can be Shia or Sunni. A Khan can be a nawab, like Saif Ali Khan, or he can be a poor illiterate from a village, like the director of Mother India, Mehboob Khan. Not all trace their lineage to the Pathans of Afghanistan.
Islam came to India in the 10th century when the Ghaznavids, a Turkic tribe, annexed the area now known as Punjab. By 1200, Muslim warlords had conquered much of northern India, and by 1206 had founded the Delhi Sultanate with its capital at Delhi.
Islam arrived in the inland of Indian subcontinent in the 7th century when the Arabs conquered Sindh and later arrived in Punjab and North India in the 12th century via the Ghaznavids and Ghurids conquest and has since become a part of India's religious and cultural heritage.
Sharmila Tagore: The gorgeous actress Sharmila Tagore, who has been awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2013, has also converted to Islam. She fell in love with the late cricketer, Mansoor Ali Pataudi, and converted to Islam before marrying him.
A comprehensive religious forecast for 2050 by the Pew Research Center predicts that the global Muslim population will grow at a faster rate than the Christian population – primarily due to the average younger age and higher fertility rate of Muslims.
Ninety-five percent of Punjabi Christians are converts to Christianity from Hinduism, accepting their new faith during the British Raj in colonial India.
Demographers and sociologists, however, say that the reason for the falling number of Sikhs in the country could be due to a variety of reasons but most agree that the most important of these is the high rate of migration of Sikhs to foreign lands over the decades.