The Religion of Peace

of war and violence. As a result of the way the media repeatedly uses the term jihad, Islam has come to be widely thought of as a religion of violence. It is instructive to note in this regard that in the Quran the Prophet is referred to as rahmatul lil alameen or a ‘mercy to the worlds’. This means that the deen or religion that he brought was a religion of mercy for the world. So, then, how is it that such a deen came to have this image of being a violent religion? Two types of misunderstanding are responsible for this notion that is contrary to reality. The first relates to not distinguishing between ideology and action. And the second relates to giving an exception the status of a general rule. It is an accepted fact that actions should be judged in the light of the ideology that is invoked for them, rather than vice versa. The contrary—to gauge an ideology in the light of actions committed in its name—is not the proper way. For instance, the proper thing to do is to judge the actions of the member-states of the United Nations in the light of the United Nations’ Charter, rather than determining the meaning of this Charter in the light of the actions of these states. In the same way, it is necessary to see Islam and Muslims separately. For instance, some Muslims worship graves of saintly personages. Seeing this behaviour, some people who worship idols might claim that there is no difference between their religion of polytheism and Islam. Naturally, this sort of comparison is not proper, because the worshipping of graves by some Muslims is a deviant action. It has nothing to do with the true teachings of Islam. The same sort of logic applies in the case of jihad. Undoubtedly, jihad is a peaceful action. However, if, for instance, the violent actions of some medieval Muslim monarchs, such as Mahmud Ghaznavi and Aurangzeb, are labelled as ‘Islamic jihads’, or if the wars waged in the name of Islam in various parts of the world today by Muslims are termed as ‘jihads’, taking their example is obviously not the proper way to ascertain what jihad really is.