Islam and World Peace

CHAPTER TWELVE The Religion of Peace h Over the centuries, much has been written about pacifism. It still remains the subject of much debate and scholarship. Pacifism, or the love of peace or the religion of peace, is a movement that is several centuries old. It aims at completely ending war so that human societies may live in peace. One can discern stirrings of pacifism in almost all periods of human history. These stirrings have taken different forms—sometimes being expressed in religious idiom, at other times, being articulated in terms of philosophy or ethics. Among pacifists there are some who desire peace for its own sake. They define peace as the absence of war. Other pacifists insist that peace must go hand-in-hand with justice. They consider the two to be inseparable. According to them, peace without justice is a negative peace, while peace with justice is a positive peace. There is no doubt that peace is the most desirable of desirable things, because for any constructive or positive work peace in society is indispensable. Without peace, no progress of any sort is possible. Peace can come about only through freedom, not through coercion. A coerced peace is a form of oppression, not true peace. Genuine peace is one that emerges from intellectual revolution. The Romans, for instance, had established peace in their Empire in a limited sense, which they called Pax Romana. In the same way, there appeared to be some sort of peace in the erstwhile Soviet Union in the 20th century—at least this is what