Non-Violence and Peace-Building in Islam

communal violence in the country can be finally stopped. And it is for the Muslims to take this step. As shown in the previous chapter, at Hudaybiyah the Prophet of Islam agreed to unilateral action and thereby put an end to the violence of the Quraysh. In the same way, Muslims must resort to this sort of unilateral action by completely refusing to engage in any form of violence. But if, on the other hand, they wait for other communities to first stop their violence, they can keep waiting forever. What should Muslims do to stop communal violence? There is only one answer—and that is, they must not get provoked in the face of provocation. The common cause of all cases of communal violence is that Muslims are unaware of a very important principle—that in life there are certain problems that simply have to be ignored. However, instead of ignoring these problems, Muslims become greatly agitated when they are confronted with them, and the logical result of this is communal violence. In every society, there are issues that are best left ignored. To get entangled in them will only magnify them even further. This is a basic fact of life. One simply cannot avoid it. That is why the Quran gives great stress to patience and the avoidance of conflict. Not ignoring matters that are best left ignored is a terrible blunder that Muslims make. The only solution to communal violence is for Muslims to completely avoid confrontation with others. If they do this, communal violence can soon come to an end. But if they do not, and, instead, they continue with their present policies, this violence will continue unchecked. Whenever Muslims talk about communal violence, they try to do just one thing: engaging in legalistic and logical analysis to try to find out which community is responsible for the violence. This is a completely wrong approach, because there are certain things in life whose rightness or