The Culture of Peace

informed the cosmos, by now it would have been devastated, and there would have been no possibility for human life to exist. The same Creator who made the rest of the cosmos created us human beings, too. The Creator wants human beings to adopt the very same ‘peace culture’ that He has established throughout the rest of the vast cosmos. The only difference is that this ‘peace culture’ prevails in the rest of the cosmos on the basis of nature, while humans are independent creatures and have free will. And so, God wishes that they should freely decide to adopt this ‘peace culture’ in their lives. The Quran, a Book of Peace The Quran is, without doubt, a book of peace. It is not a book of violence and war. All the statements of the Quran are, directly or indirectly, related to peace. The very first phrase in the Quran is: ‘In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful.’ In other words, the highest attribute of the God who has sent this Book is mercy, and this Book is an expression of this attribute of His mercy. All the verses of the Quran are, directly or indirectly, based on peace. There are more than 6000 verses in the Quran. Of these, hardly 40 are about commandments of qital or war—in other words, less than 1 per cent. . Those who regard the Quran as God’s Book can be considered to be true believers only when, abiding by the teachings of the Quran, they become fully and completely peace-loving. On no condition whatsoever should they take to the path of violence. In this regard, one needs to stress the need for people to distinguish between Islam, on the one hand, and Muslims, on the other. They must not label the actions or behaviour of Muslims as ‘Islamic’. The fact is that the behavior of Muslims must be judged on the basis of Islam. Islam should not be sought to be understood on the basis of the Muslims’ behaviour. Islam is an