The Islamic reports on the massacres of Hindus, destruction of Hindu temples, the abduction of Hindu women and forced conversions, invariably express… - Koenraad Elst

Even the Buddha found a place on the saints' calendar under the name Saint Josaphat. ... The Gospels contain a number of almost literal repetitions of phrases, parables and scenes from the Buddhist canon, particularly from the Mahaparinirvana-Sutra: the master walking on water (and saying to the baffled disciples: "It's me"), the simile of the blind leading the blind, the multiplication of the loaves of bread, the master asking and accepting water from a woman belonging to a despised community, the call not to pass judgment on others, the call to respond to hostility with love, and other overly well-known motifs. Both doctrinal elements and biographical anecdotes have been borrowed. The Buddha's mother saw in a dream how a white elephant placed the promising boy in her womb while a heavenly being revealed the great news to the father, roughly like the annunciation to Mary and Joseph. The loose but devout woman Mary Magdalene is a neat copy of the Buddha-revering courtesan Amrapali. The iconography of Jesus resembles that of the expected future Buddha Maitreya, a name derived from maitri, "fellow-feeling, friendship", close enough to the Christian notion of agape/charity. The Maitreya is depicted with lotus flowers in the places where Jesus has stigmata of the crucifixion. This is becoming too much for coincidence, and the similarity is moreover strengthened by very specific details. Thus, Jesus relates how a widow offers two pennies from her humble possessions and thereby earns more merit than a wealthy man who gives a larger gift from his abundant riches. In Buddhist texts we find the same message in several variants, among them that of a widow offering two pennies; a holy monk disregards the larger gift of a wealthy man and praises the widow's piety. ... These similarities are certainly the fruit of historical contacts, though apart from the presence of a Buddhist community outside Alexandria (the Therapeutai), the details of the whereabouts of Buddhists in West Asia are as yet eluding us.

An even more damaging part for the secularists is Meenakshi Jain’s presentation of their own testimonies in court. For the first time, we get to see how one after another, the secular “experts” collapse or lose their credidibility when subjected to cross-examination. One after another admits under oath that he or she has no experience with or no professional competence on the history or archaeology of Ayodhya. Their bluff was enough to fool the mass of secular politicians and gullible press correspondents, but failed to stand up to critical questioning. The Indologists who have invoked those “experts” as arguments of authority, can somewhat restore their lost honour by publicly naming and shaming them and by apologizing for following in their footsteps and ridiculing the old consensus – rather than, at best, looking away and pretending there never was an Ayodhya controversy in the first place; or, worse, still keeping up the false allegations that once swept the concerned public opinion across the globe. (Ch 23)

Life is short, but longer than necessary to fathom Islam, which is a simple subject. I still read about the history of Islam on occasion, but actually this doctrine and its application offer me no intellectual challenge anymore. That does not mean it has lost my interest, but our knowledge of Islam is quite sufficient for basing action on. I remain available for formulating a policy regarding Islam based upon scientific knowledge, not the fairy tales and taboos of the current policies. But about Islam as a doctrine that motivates the actions of Muslims over the centuries, there is nothing new to understand anymore. There remain many people to convince, but mostly they have already heard the facts and simply decided to remain deaf to them. You can take a horse to the river but you cannot force it to drink. Some people are simply happier in their delusions, and only a rough collision with reality will be able to help them.