The Sensible Way to Respond to Provocation

several years was automatically resolved. From then on, the university students stopped troubling the students of the institution. This is a remarkable instance of how to win over one’s opponents. But the question arises as to why some people who in personal matters choose to solve their disputes by trying to win their opponents’ hearts act in a completely contradictory manner when it comes to their community at large—by urging frenzied emotional outburst and confrontation against other communities. The reason for this is that such people view disputes that involve their personal interests from the point of view of finding a possible solution. In contrast, they see the problems of their community from the point of view of the possibility that these afford for asserting their claims to community leadership. If they were to adopt in community-related affairs the same approach that they adopt in their personal affairs, their cheap leadership and cheap popularity would suddenly vanish! Lamentably, no Muslim leader is courageous enough to consider doing anything of this sort. But the fact of the matter is that there is simply no other solution than this to the problems of the community, including that of inter-community violence. We must adopt the same wise approach in matters relating to the problems of the community as we do in the case of disputes that involve our personal interests. If Muslims were to act in this way, inter-community violence would become a thing of the past. I once met a man who lived in a place that had witnessed deadly communal riots, in which Muslims had suffered enormous loss in a span of just three days. He said to me, “I have been living in this city for the last 30 years. But never in all these years have we witnessed anything like what we witnessed in the last three days.” And then, as is the norm, he began cursing the community that he singled out as responsible for this violence.