The way to be safe from thorns is to avoid becoming entangled with them.
When you come to a thorny patch walk carefully around it— not through it.
July 9, 2008
The way to be safe from thorns is to avoid becoming entangled with them.
When you come to a thorny patch walk carefully around it— not through it.
In the 21st Century man has reached the pinnacle of technological advancement. Along with the positive achievements, he is also confronted with negative influences such as stress, materialism, inequality, work and social pressures. As a result, more and more people are succumbing to negative emotions such as retaliation, intolerance and hatred. The result of such negative emotions is aggression at an individual level and violence, disharmony and eventually terrorism – the IRA of Ireland, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka and the Islamic Fundamentalist groups – at the collective level. Establishing peace at a global level therefore has become the # 1 priority, as it is the only way to achieve everything positive and therefore a crucial factor for human survival. No excuse, therefore, justifies the use of violence, in individual or collective life. We must maintain peace unilaterally, for nothing that we desire can be achieved without it, though at opposite poles, peace and violence result from human thinking. If one were to think of the end result, one would never indulge in violence. One should bear in mind that peace is in consonance with humanity, whereas violence means a descent to the animal level. Peaceful minds make for a peaceful world.
At CPS we believe that Peace and Spirituality both are in fact two aspects of the one truth. Positive thinking at an individual level is called spirituality; when this positive thinking reaches a collective level in society, it results in what is known as peace.
Scholars have defined peace thus: “Peace is the absence of war.” This definition is absolutely correct. Peace in fact means the absence of a situation of war or violence. However, some people hold this definition of peace to be inadequate. They say that justice should accompany peace; that peace devoid of justice is no peace. But setting such a condition for the attainment of peace is impractical. This is because peace on its own does not bring justice. That is, justice is not necessarily an element of peace. What peace does, in actual fact, is to open up opportunities. It creates favourable conditions that would enable us to strive for justice and other constructive ends. Peace is always desirable for its own sake. Everything else comes after peace, not along with peace.
According to Islam, peace is therefore not simply an absence of war; peace opens doors to all kinds of opportunities that are present in any given situation. It is only in a peaceful situation that planned activities are possible. It is for this reason that the Prophet Muhammad (May peace be upon him) went to great extents to establish peace at all costs. The treaty of Hudaybiyya, between the Prophet and his opponents, provides one such clear example. From the details of the peace treaty, it is clear that no clause regarding justice was included. Obviously the conditions of this treaty were quite against justice. But the Prophet accepted this treaty, not because it was giving them justice, but because it was paving the way to work for justice. It is for this reason that the Qur’an says ‘reconciliation is the best’ (4:128).
Therefore, according to Islam, the only practicable formula for obtaining peace is, therefore:
‘Ignore the problems, avail of the opportunities.’
Because of the importance of peace, the Qur’an has clearly declared that no aggressive war is permitted in Islam. Muslims can engage themselves only in a defensive, not in an offensive war, irrespective of the circumstances (2:190).
Similarly the Prophet Muhammad PBUH has observed: “God grants to gentleness (rifq) what He does not grant to violence (unf). (Sunah Abu Dawud 4/255)
The Qur’an has this to say of the mission of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH: We have not sent you forth but as a mercy to mankind. (21:107)
No wonder, then, that the Prophet Muhammad PBUH so earnestly used to entreat his Lord in his daily prayer: “O God, You are the original source of Peace; from You is all Peace, and to You returns all Peace. So, make us live with Peace; and let us enter paradise: the House of Peace. Blessed be You, our Lord, to whom belongs all Majesty and Honour!”
This is the Ideology of Peace as presented in Islam. We can say that a peace policy always serves to conquer the enemy without any bloodshed. History shows that the peace policy has always proved to be mightier than the violent method. Peace actually means life, while violence means death. Peace leads to construction, while violence leads to destruction. Likewise, peace brings progress, while violence brings annihilation. Peace enhances creativity, whereas violence does the very opposite. The power of a peace is based on love, while that of violence is based on hatred.
Japan is an excellent example of using the peaceful method. Japan’s industrial cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were destroyed by the atom bombs in 1945. After the holocaust, Japan abandoned violence and adopted a peaceful course, which it termed as a reverse course for its national development. And as a result, within forty years, Japan rapidly became a great economic power of the world.
We find another interesting example of a peaceful method in India. India’s freedom struggle was started in 1857. But, even after more than 60 years of sacrifice, the desired political goal remained a distant dream. Then, in 1920, Gandhi emerged as the leader of the freedom struggle. Taking a U-turn, he abandoned the violent method and opted for a peaceful course of action for the freedom movement.
Things took a miraculous turn after that, with the British Empire becoming paralyzed: a non-violent Gandhi had taken away from the British any justification for the use of violence. The following anecdote is an apt illustration.
When Gandhi launched his freedom movement in India by following a peaceful method instead of resorting to violent means, a British officer sent a telegram to his secretariat in these words:
“Kindly wire instructions how to kill a tiger non-violently.”
Therefore the success, which was not forthcoming, even after a long and violent struggle, was achieved by peaceful methods in a short period of time.
To understand the Ideology of Peace let us go through the following sections.
To know about more about the ideology of peace write to contact us.
