TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

Congregations led by earlier prophets did not achieve political success during their prophets’ lifetimes. Their prophets only left them an ideological legacy. That is why we find political extremism absent in them. At the most, they can indulge only in ideological extremism. According to the Quran (22: 78) and the Hadith, the greatest duty of the Muslim community is to spread the divine message of Islam peacefully among other nations. But because of their extremist political approach, present-day Muslims have abandoned this missionary duty. The most dangerous aspect of their forsaking this duty is their labelling of nonmissionary activities as missionary work. For instance, debates, political protests, Muslim-reform activities, community work, are all termed missionary work by today’s Muslims. The most urgent task today is to inculcate this consciousness of the divine mission and to set up an educational system on the principles of this mission. Muslims should be raised as a missionary group or witnesses (22: 78)—as it is called in the Quran—and should be prevented from indulging in non-missionary activities. Without taking such a step, missionary work cannot be effectively performed. The Quran (5: 67) tells us that the secret of protection from others’ plots lies in the performance of dawah (communication of the message of God). That is, if Muslims engage in dawah work, their lives, properties and wealth will be protected by God. In short, the communication of the religious message is the responsibility of Muslims, while the protection of their worldly interests rests with God. According to a famous tradition, ‘our actions are judged by our intentions’. Intention here is the equivalent of what is generally called spirit. This means that although there are many actions which in form appear to be morally acceptable, it is to the spirit of these acts rather than their external form that Islam attaches real importance. From a Hadith we learn that Prophet Muhammad, speaking of the Muslims of the future predicted that only the external form of Islamic actions would survive. That is to say, the actions of the Muslims of the future would be lacking in internal spirit and only the outer form of their religious observances would persist. People will remain ignorant of the true spirit of Islam so long as they are conversant only with its forms and attach importance only to the externals. Ghulu, or extremism, is invariably relevant to externals and not to internal realities.