The Religion of Peace

The Religion of Peace turned them into servants of the faith. Today, men like Osama Bin Laden who talk about violence very easily become heroes among Muslims, but if someone talks about peace and respect for humanity, he will not be able to gain general acceptance among them. The greatest damage caused by this mentality is that humanity in general no longer remains the concern of Muslims. Muslims have come to divide God’s servants into two categories: ‘my community’, on the one hand, and ‘other communities’, on the other, and they view the latter with prejudice. According to the dawah-oriented way of thinking, Muslims should see themselves as da‘is and others as mad‘us. On the contrary, in the way of thinking that is based on confrontation, Muslims consider others as their enemies and rivals. Following the rise of the domination of Western powers, this latter way of thinking received a tremendous boost. Muslims began to feel that Western peoples had snatched from them their superior position. As a result of this, their enmity was further exacerbated and turned into hatred. And so, generally speaking, Muslims began to view other communities as their enemies. Islam in the 21st Century One aspect of the revolution that occurred through the Prophet and his Companions in the early period of Islam culminated in that very period itself. This was the completion of the revelation of the Quran and the establishment of an ideological and practical model of the Islamic way of life. This model has been preserved for all time in the form of the Quran, the Hadith, and the reports about the lives of the Prophet’s Companions. It is, for all times, a reliable model of a divine way of life that people may seek to emulate. A second aspect of the Islamic revolution in the early period of Islam was one that, because of its nature, required a gradual or step-by-step approach. That is why it reached its culmination after a long period of time. It entered human history in the form of a continuous process. It involved a transformation with very farreaching historical implications. It required a process of change