Islam and World Peace

By: Ayatullah Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari
A peace imposed by an imperialist power controlling the masses for its own benefit is no peace. "Divide and Rule" generates no peace. Conferences, agencies and idealist slogans beget no peace. The U.N. Security Council debates limitations of armaments and gets nowhere. The Eastern bloc and the Capitalist camp both say they want a world-system: but they cannot agree on its shape. Class differences rage in both their camps. Both err in thinking that economics is the sole cause of divisions, and in believing that economic measures will by themselves suffice to eradicate conflicts and substitute peace.
For Islam, peace is only one among many ingredients in the effective recipe for human happiness. People must be free to think what they will as they will, to weigh all possibilities, and, having thought them through in the light of reason, to decide on the best way to live together. This is the Qur'anic prescription as laid down, for instance, in verse 256 of the Sura II (Baqara —"The Heifer"): "In religion is no compulsion. Truth stands out clear from error,"
etc. or Sura VI: Ana'am — "The cattle" (verse 104): "Proofs from your Lord come to you. He that hath eyes to see, let him see. Whoso will see will do so for his soul: Whoso refuses, does so against himself. I am not your guard or warder."
Or again in verse 22 of Sura LXXXVIII: Al-Ghashiyya —"The Overwhelming Events": "Admonish! Thou art for admonition, not for surveillance, of -them!"
Conviction and faith are matters of heart. No compulsion can force the heart to conform. Education, training, instruction, logic, demonstration, font-family: can help. But whatever the lips say, the heart remains unmoved. Even Galileo murmured "Eppure si muove" after his recantation! or so we are told. Only his lips and his pen recanted, in effect.
Christian propagandists sedulously spread lying reports that Muhammad forced his religion on people by the sword. They cite the Prophet's proclamation of the Jihad, and his raids from Medina. We have shown how false is this misinterpretation.
What of their own religious wars and nationalist wars and imperialist and expansionist wars? What of the pressure brought by the Inquisition font-family: on non-Christians and on Christians suspected of heresy? Were they better than the Tartar barbarism of the ant-like hordes of Genghiz and Tamurlane?
One item of the pact of Hudeibiyya made between the Prophet and the Qureishi idolaters of Mecca read: "Any Qureishi who shall flee from Mecca without the permission of his superior and join the Muslims and accept Islam, the Prophet of Islam binds himself to send him back to the Qureish. But if a member of the Muslim forces flees to the Qureishi side, the Qureish are not obliged to return him to the Muslims."
Some of the Muslims, rendered uncomfortable by this clause, asked the Prophet: "Why do we have to return refugees from the Qureish while they are not obliged to return a fugitive to us?"
The Prophet replied: "Any so-called Muslim who is ready to desert the banner of Islam in favor of idolatry, and to prefer an inhuman religion and idolatrous environment to the sound sane environment and religion of monotheistic Islam, simply proves that he had never entered into the inwardness of Islam and that his faith had never been so real as to satisfy his soul. Such are not the Muslims we need. Whereas we are quite sure that the Lord of Heaven will Himself take measures for the salvation of anyone whom we may hand back to the Qureish, if he was sincere in his flight from them."
So true was this prophecy, and so shaking the series of events which occurred amongst the Qureish on behalf of Muslims who had been sent back to them, that in terror the Qureish themselves very soon requested that this item he annulled, and that no more of their refugees be sent back to them to become conscious missionaries or unconscious instruments of divine action in this world.
Islam condemns the territorial and commercial wars of modern great powers, with their merciless involvements of the innocent. Islam demands that ethical values, humanity and respect for the rights of others, in submission to truth and to what is right, shall be made regnant over the thinking and living of all mankind, and insists that until that demand is realized the world can never find its way to peace and quiet.
The more progress technology and the material side of civilization makes, the more men quote the maxim "Si vis pacem, para bellum" as a pretext for an arms race not merely in quantities but also in destructiveآ­ ness, the more obvious is the truth made that humanity stands at a crossroads of choice between mass suicide or salvation by faith, annihilation or acceptance of ethical principles, the brutal dictatorship of a man or the merciful government of God.
When man wakes up to this situation — and the very horrors which face him may themselves open his eyes—we pray that the light of reason and of heavenly wisdom will lead him onto "the good road, the road of those to whom God is gracious, hot the road of those who continue to grope in darkness." It is our conviction that mankind will choose this superior way.
On the warp of individual change Islam weaves the woof of social structure. It brings to human living the delicate feelings of brotherhood and of belonging together. It designs a beautiful pattern of longsuffering, gentleness and goodness in the hearts of people; and omits all the ugly tears and rents and weaknesses that injustice and the pulling and hauling of rival interests cause in a fabric. The result is a harmonious whole like that of the most beautiful carpet in which every color and shape is fully itself and the ensemble so fitly joined together that it presents a perfect picture.

Islam Today?
What has happened to us, the heirs of so brilliant and magnificent a civilization? What has reduced us to our present living conditions? Why have we ceded the hegemony of our world to others? What has caused the decline in our culture, in our science and our political power? What stopped our progress in its tracks? Why have we yielded our leadership in manufactures and science to Westerners so that we now need them where they once needed us? Why must Muslims, with all their splendid past in East and West, hang their heads in the modern world?
It was not blowing our own trumpet or banging our own drum that raised Islam to world pre-eminence in its time. It was our culture, our remarkable spiritual and social revolution. Shame that we should waste our strength in conflicts amongst ourselves and in internecine tugs-of-war which have reduced the glory of Unity to an empty phoneme.
A strong nation can only be built on firm principles of manners, morals, order —sole sources of progress. Islam never owed its power to cannons and tanks and weapons but to the pre-eminence in thought -amongst its Ulema, in character amongst its peoples and in following the guidance of God on the good road (for which we pray in the Fatiha 17 times a day), the road of justice, fellowship, brotherhood.
History demonstrates unmistakably that whenever the Muslims have constructed their philosophy of life in the spirit of the teachings revealed to them by Heaven, they have prospered: and whenever they have deserted those teachings, adversity and misfortune have been visited upon them. The Muslims who founded the brilliant culture and social wellbeing of the past followed those teachings more closely than we do, individual, society and nation alike.
The sun of culture shone while just measure and proportion was given to science, thought, matter and spirit. When we deserted those, the banner of endeavor, diligence and combat for right fell from our hands, only to be grabbed by the West in self-aggrandisement.
Where is the old Muslim sincerity, integrity, honesty and truthfulness? These were once the fences on either side of our path. When we transgressed across them we were lost in a trackless desert, and abandoned the holy calling, announced as God's purpose for us, of leading mankind to live as God wills. Abandoning that destiny, we sank in the quicksands of corruption, ignorance and wretchedness which engulf us today. Yet a truly united Islam could return to that heavenly vocation and lead mankind's feet on to the spiritual road. This would be a blessing for all.
Napoleon's companion in exile on the island of St. Helena wrote: "In Egypt Napoleon constantly repeated his amazement at the blessings which the Prophet of Islam and her other great men in history had brought to the foreign lands they took under their sway. He looked with hope to Islam as the force which might again confer such blessings on the world, even saying: 'I think I will take up Islam as my religion'."
A true Islamic society would be very different from that which obtains anywhere in the world. Its thinking and its living must once again incarnate those heavenly principles of its inception. As the poet said: "Islam's pure truth's from spot or blemish free: Our Muslims blame for any fault you see."
To take its full share in that moral and spiritual revolution which must come to the entire world, Islam must orient itself in today's global realities. It must then undertake those internal reforms which will be its -restitution for past backwardness. It must balance spiritual and material conditions in the right proportion in accordance with those principles of perfection which shaped the glories of its past and which are dictated by the Lord of both worlds — this one and the next. In these it will find, not merely its own internal stability, but also the secret of stability for the world and the way to mediate it to all mankind.
Let us sum up the topics treated in this volume and the conclusions to which they lead. We started with man's ascent from a primitive animal- like soul dwelling in holes and caves of the rocks up to the sophisticated denizen of the atomic space-age and its affluent technological society.
We evaluated that society as it manifests itself in the West, and studied its interaction with the more leisurely Orient, illustrating with an Iranian's reaction to his sojourn in Europe.
We examined the reasons for the growth of Christianity; and then scrutinized the history of its rise, its split into sects, and the effects of these things on the world, not least in anti-Islamic propaganda honored with the ferocity only accorded to a rival who is truly feared. We saw Islam and Christianity face to face in Africa.
We considered the pursuit of happiness in a machine-made culture, its worship of sex, its wild seeking of sensations in materialistic ways, and the reaction of drop-outs who revolt against its drab monotony.
We saw the effects of permissiveness over alcohol; the desperate contrasts between the haves and the have-nots allowed in the world by the irresponsibility of those whose religion should make them care; the bloody wars conducted by partisans of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals; race discrimination, and the breakdown of the -family; artificial shortages of vital goods engineered by vested interests in certain essential commodities.
Part 2 turned to look at what Islam has to offer this disturbed world; its doctrine of Man, of Eternity and Judgment, of social life on earth and the individual's duties therein; its emphasis on reason; its education program; its political implications, and its demand for total self-alignment of each human will with the Supreme Will of the Creator of all things visible and invisible.
Part 3 dwelt on Islam's way of dealing with social problems: alcoholism, family life, racism, the class war and world peace.
Finally we asked: What is the position of Islam today, what is its task and what role should it and could it be playing in helping mankind out of the morass into which the divisive materialisms of East and West threaten to plunge us one and all?
The endeavor has been made to be scrupulously fair, to relate only known facts, to make deductions from such facts and to envisage the world as it might be. On a merely materialistic and human plane there may seem to be grounds for a disillusioned and despairing pessimism. But the marvels of renascence which have happened again and again in mankind's history, the knowledge of the great gifts which the Creator has implanted within His creatures, the certainty of His pardoning and merciful compassion towards all those whom He has set upon this earth, and above all that faith which is given to those who set their trust in Him and seek in daily prayer to put themselves at His disposal to be guided on the straight road, provide us with the optimism of a sure hope.
We therefore end with "Insha'Allah all things shall be turned to good." The Muslim's "Insha'Allah" is not, as some Westerners have falsely claimed, a supine, fainأ©ant fatalism which accepts whatever comes without lifting a finger to shape the course of events: it is, on the contrary, an active enlistment in God's service, to serve with the obedience that a willing slave both owes and gives to a beneficent Master who owns him heart and soul. If enough men and women in the world adopt that militant obedience of the "Abedeen", who can doubt that Almighty Providence will once again pour forth the bounty of His grace upon a perishing world?