TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

Islam believes that the whole world including the Muslim world is dar al-insaan (the abode of human beings). It is Muslims’ bounden duty to regard all human beings as God’s creatures. Once, in Madinah, the Prophet of Islam, on seeing the funeral procession of a Jew, stood up in deference to it. One of his Companions asked him why he did so, to which he replied: ‘Was he not a human being?’ The Prophet Muhammad thus recognised a commonality between himself and a Jew—that the God who had created him had also created the Jew. This is the real basis of human equality. Today the armament industry is one of the most flourishing enterprises in the world. Who has made it so? It is clearly the buyers of arms. God gave them minds so that they might use it for a healthy purpose. But they have instead used them for a destructive purpose, which is against the divine will. The Creator will question them on how they used their minds—to a constructive end or a destructive end? The Creator will point out to them that He had given them their precious minds to be used for constructive purposes, but they used them instead for destructive purposes. Will they have any answer to this? o