He is remembered by Hindus for perpetrating violence and torture upon his non-Muslim subjects in a bid to make them convert to Islam. It was under the influence of the Sufi extremist, Mir Mohammad Hamadani, that he committed atrocities against non-Muslims in his lands. Large numbers of Hindus converted, fled, or were brutally tortured and killed for refusal to convert during his reign. near Anantnag, which was destroyed due to the iconoclastic policies of Sikandar Butshikan, photo taken by John Burke in 1868. Sikandar won the sobriquet of but-shikan or idol-breaker, due to his actions related to the desecration and destruction of numerous temples, chaityas, viharas, shrines, hermitages, and other holy places of the Hindus and Buddhists. He banned dance, drama, music, iconography and such other religious, cultural or aesthetic activities of the Hindus and Buddhists, and classified them as heretical and un-Islamic. He forbade the Hindus to apply a tilak mark on their foreheads. He did not permit them to pray and worship, blow a conch shell or even to toll a bell. So unspeakable was Sikandar's tyranny that he even stopped Hindus and Buddhists from cremating their dead and compelled them to bury the bodies using Muslim rituals. He imposed the Jizya, a poll-tax to be paid by non-Muslims living as subjects in a Muslim state, and the levy was a heavy one: each non-Muslim was required to pay an annual tax of four tolas of silver.
Islamization of Kashmir
During the Shah Miri dynasty, Islam was violently enforced on the ethnic Hindu population of Kashmir and his rule has been considered controversial by several scholars due to his hateful, violent, non-accommodating, and non-secular policies in Kashmir. In consonance with the customs in Delhi and elsewhere, Sikandar created the office of Sheikh-ul-Islam and more important, decided that the Islamic law should be valid instead of the traditional law. But, as in other places, that may have been restricted mainly to the personal law. It was during Sikander's reign that a wave of Sufi preachers headed by Mir Muhammad Hamadani arrived in Kashmir in 1393. It is possibly under Hamadani's influence that Sultan Sikandar implemented an orthodox religious policy. The selling of wine, dancing of women, music and gambling were prohibited. The non-Mulsims had to pay jizya, and were forbidden to displayreligious symbols like wearing tilak. The Kashmiri chronicler Jonaraja writes:
