The Culture of Peace

accordance with the practice, or sunnat, of God. God’s sunnat in this regard is that He sends warnings to communities or peoples to wake them up. This is a sort of shock treatment to jolt people and make them reform themselves. As God says in the Quran: When the affliction decreed by Us befell them, they did not humble themselves, but rather their hearts hardened, for Satan had made all their doings seem fair to them. (6:43) This Quranic verse mentions a common human tendency— of dressing up a bad deed in beautiful-sounding words so that its wrongness is concealed. This is exactly what has happened with Muslims in present times. Present-day Muslim leaders have, consciously or otherwise, done exactly what this Quranic verse describes. The problems that present-day Muslims faced from other communities were Divine warnings. However, Muslim leaders began expressing these problems in terms of ‘oppression’ and ‘conspiracies’. As a result of this, Muslims failed to see that these events had occurred in order for them to realize their own mistakes and turn to their own internal reform. Muslims did not realize this, and owing to the wrong guidance of their ‘leaders’, the whole animus of the Muslims was directed on to, and against, other communities. These events were intended to make Muslims introspect, but they came to be wrongly construed as meaning that they should criticize other peoples. This tendency began magnifying over time, till it assumed the form of violence and militancy. The Power of Silence Umar Farooq, the second Muslim Caliph, is said to have remarked, ‘Destroy falsehood (batil) by keeping silent about it.’ According to the law of nature, truth is destined to live and