When you support men like bin Qasim and Ghaznavi, you reinforce the myth that Islam was spread by the sword.

The real heroes were Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi, Ali Hujweri, Moinuddin Chishti, Nizamuddin Auliya, Shah Waliullah, etc, who helped spread Islam through love, understanding and personal examples of selflessness and piety.

Bin Qasim was a military man whose conquest of Sindh is an affair that is over-romanticized out of proportion by our very own propagandists who wish to justify and propagate their own views. You say that he spent the entire night in prayer and this is precisely the sort of stuff that can be abundantly found in our history books when "Muslim personalities" are described. The fact is that very few Pakistani historians view history objectively and instead, they view it through the lenses of the Two-Nation Theory. In the big picture, they're the students who suffer because by learning 'facts' that cannot be proven and that have more to do with political expedience than the actual truth, they remain ignorant and intellectually dead.

There was a time when the historians of Europe saved such saintly praise for their kings and heroes. Then after the intellectual revolutions of the 16th and 17th centuries, they shunned this practice because of its inherent immaturity and implied lack of confidence in our true history and abilities.

For example, Aurengzeb is celebrated as a walking bastion of chivalry and piety in our history books. Doesn't anyone care to read about what he did to his own father and brothers and how he would be tried for war crimes today for his action in his Afghan territories?

Here's my advice - if you wanna be a learned person, read history books authored by Pakistani men with a pinch of salt.

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He conquers who endures.