The Policy of the Prophet

Islam is a religion of peace, in the full sense of the word. This being so, the question arises: Can Islam, which offers the teachings of peace, be relevant for the modern age? Can it regain a superior position for itself in changed circumstances? The answer is totally in the affirmative. The very fact of Islam being a religion of peace shows that it is an eternal religion. If it had been otherwise, it would not have endured. For in this day and age, according to modern thinking, the use of violence has been totally rejected. Now the human mind finds acceptable or worthy of consideration only that system the teachings of which are based on peace and non­-violence. Communism, for example, has been rejected by modern thinking. One of the major reasons for this was that the proponents of communism believed in violence. And under no circumstances can the modern mind find this acceptable. Other ideologies like Nazism and Fascism have already been rejected on the same score. If modern man dislikes religious or secular extremism, it is because this leads ultimately to violence. Islam, however, is a religion of nature and has always been an upholder of peace. For this reason, violence and extremism have been held totally undesirable from day one. For human construction, Islam has played a great role as a result of which human history entered a new phase of progress and development. The time has come today for Islam to play its constructive role once again and lead human history into a new phase of progress. What is known as scientific or technical progress is the result of the discovery of nature. This nature has always existed in our world, so why has its discovery been so delayed? Why could the scientific progress made over the last few centuries not have been made thousands of years ago? The reason was that in ancient times religion and science (divine learning and human learning) were, inextricably linked with one another. In this way, religious dogma was a permanent obstacle to scientific development. What Islam did was to separate religion, which in those days was nothing but a set of superstitious beliefs, from the process of scientific investigation. For instance, lunar eclipses and solar eclipses were believed to affect human destiny. The Prophet of Islam declared that eclipses had no bearing on the fate of human beings, for all such events were astronomical in nature and unrelated to the human lot. (Musnad Ahmad, Hadith No. 20178) This separation of religion and science is ably illustrated by the well-known incident of the pollination of dates which was narrated by Musa ibn Talha on the authority of his father and recorded in the Sahih of Imam Muslim: I was with the Prophet when he passed by some people who had climbed up to the top of some date palms. The Prophet enquired as to what they were doing. He was told that they were pollinating the trees in order to fertilize them. The Prophet said, ‘I don’t think this will benefit them.’ When people learned of the Prophet’s comment, they stopped the practice of pollination. The yield, however, was very low that year. When the Prophet came to know of this, he said, “If