Islam and World Peace

Preface h This book is a collection of articles that I have published over the years in the Urdu magazine Al-Risala on the subject of Islam and peace. These articles were written with the basic intention of clearing up the misunderstandings that abound about Islamic teachings about peace and war and to state the authentic position on these matters. Islam is a completely peaceful religion. In Islam, peace is the general rule or norm and war is only an exception. This rare exception is always as a compulsion in response to the actions of others. War is not something that Muslims should initiate unilaterally. The basic aim of Islam is to transform people’s thinking and to bring about an intellectual revolution in their minds based on tawhid, or the oneness of God. A hadith, contained in the Fath al-Bari, tells us that the Prophet observed that if the heart is in a proper condition, the whole human body will likewise be so. Conversely, if the heart is in poor condition, the whole body will malfunction. The ‘heart’ and ‘body’ are symbolically used in this narrative to suggest that just as our bodily health depends on the health of our hearts, the quality of our religious lives depends on our faith or iman. Psychologists tell us that our thoughts determine our actions. Thus, the quality of our actions depends on the quality of our thoughts. That is why Islam places great stress on nurturing