The people of Samarqand asked him, ìDid not the ulema, the learned men and the intellectuals of those lands forbid the infidels and the lost people f… - Zain-ul-Abidin

When the virtuous Sultan Sikandar, the Iconoclast, left this house of toil for the house of comfort, his son Sultan Zainuíl- ëAbidin succeeded him. This Sultan reversed the policy of his father and adopted the path of prevarication (fisq) and heresy (zandaqa). He brought some of the infidels close to himself and on some others he conferred ministries. He revived all customs and rituals of infidels and polytheists. He rebuilt all the idol-houses and temples that had been razed and destroyed. By rebuilding the temples of the infidels and the people of darkness and prevarication, this ruler ó who was not God-fearing ó popularised their religion. In this way, the fallacious beliefs and oppressive vices of the heretics and dualists gained strength to such an extent that in every household, most of its members returned to infidelity, heresy and despicable innovation.1 Only a small number of people expressed adherence to Islam. Islamic tenets and the customs of idolaters had got mixed up in a way that the nobles, officials, and the Sultan, all considered the heretics, the infidels, the wretched and the innovators as their close associates to drink and dine with. In his mathanavi, of which we bring a few verses here, Qadi Muhammad Qudsi, has properly depicted the condition of those days:

Despite the fact that learned and distinguished men of the times are always amidst them each one experienced in his own right and each one having examined the books a thousand times, none of them is really aware of the basics of faith. Nobody is able to show the path of true religion. Nobody cares for the religion (Islam). Everybody is on the path of falsehood and ignorant about religion and the ways of faith. They care for riches that are expendable but unmindful of that which lasts long, he said.

When Sikandar’s successor Sultan Zainul Abedin (aka Shahi Khan, r. 1417–67), another deviant Muslim ruler, permitted the converted Hindus to revert, records Sydney Owen, ‘many Hindus (i.e., Hindus converted to Islam by force) were re-admitted into the Hindu fold.’