The Religion of Peace

The Religion of Peace block their onward journey. But it never happens that they are able to stop the streams from moving ahead. There is a simple explanation for this, which can be summarized in a single word: avoidance. That is to say, avoid confrontation and make your way ahead. And so, whenever a stream is faced with a boulder, then, without even a moment’s delay, it swerves to the right or the left of the boulder and creates a way for itself and moves ahead. Instead of removing the boulder out of its way, it removes itself, as it were. In this way, without halting for even a moment, it keeps up its journey uninterrupted. There is a wonderful lesson for us in this natural phenonomenon. In this way, nature sends out a message to human beings—that instead of confronting and battling against difficulties, one should simply ignore them. Instead of trying to destroy obstacles, simply move away from them and carry on with your work. This approach can be appropriately termed ‘positive status quoism’. An examination of the life of the Prophet of Islam reveals that he always adopted this very approach. The result of this was that he succeeded in ushering in a revolutionary transformation that involved such little loss of life that it can undoubtedly be called a ‘bloodless revolution’. This policy of ‘positive status quoism’ is the biggest guarantee of peace in the contemporary world. It would not be wrong to say that the major cause of wars is the attempt to disrupt the status quo, and that the best way to establish peace is to accept the status quo and carry on with constructive activities. The Notion of Jihad in Islam Jihad is an Arabic word. It simply means to make efforts. In its real sense, it is synonymous with peaceful efforts or struggle. In its expanded sense, jihad is also used for war, but in Arabic the actual word for war is qital, not jihad. In present times, the word jihad is often used in the sense