Islam As It Is January-February

in nature. Its goal was to put an end to the age of religious persecution and usher in the age of religious freedom. This end was fully achieved during the early period of Islam, the age of the pious Caliphs. Afterwards the time came to keep the sword in its sheath and engage in dawah work, that is, the call to God, which was the real and permanent goal of Islam. According to the explicit command of the Quran, the call to God is the true and eternal mission of Islam, whereas war is only temporary and allowed only in exceptional cases. Here it would be pertinent to refer to a great companion of the Prophet. After the period of the pious Caliphate, a group of Muslims once again engaged in war. At that time, some senior Companions were present in Makkah and Madinah. But they did not join these wars, one prominent name being that of Abdullah ibn Umar ibn Khattab. He did not approve of these wars; therefore he remained away from them. Some of those involved in these wars came to him and said: God has commanded us in the Quran to fight against fitna (persecution). Then why do you not join with us in these wars? Abdullah ibn Umar replied that “the command of the Quran to fight against fitna is not what you hold to be fitna. Fitna meant religious persecution and we have already fought and put an end to this fitna (qad fa‘aIna). Therefore now after the removal of this obstacle, we have to engage ourselves in peaceful dawah work, rather than initiating hostilities and creating new fitna once again, which is akin to creating new obstacles for peaceful Islamic dawah” (al-Bukhari, Sahih, Kitab at-Tafsir, under alBaqarah and al-Anfal). Umar ibn Abdullah had made an extremely pertinent point at the most appropriate time, but this point of view was not forcefully taken up by others. Afterwards when the Islamic