TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

It is totally wrong to claim that a particular country or nation is trying to destroy Muslim culture, and use this to justify violent conflicts. Today everyone is free to adopt their own culture. After having travelled all over the world, it could be said that, in no country are efforts being made to destroy the Muslim identity. It is a baseless allegation. Sometimes, this struggle for independence and separation by Muslim minorities from a non-Muslim majority state is sought to be justified by claiming that these states are calculatedly working to reduce Muslims to a minority. Hence, it is argued, that it is legitimate to seek separation and independence from non-Muslim-majority states. This argument too is completely wrong. Islam never enjoins upon Muslims to establish a separate state or to strive for political independence. According to Islam, the political system is a matter of social conditions. It is quite un-Islamic to launch a movement to establish a political system based on some self-styled model and to say that any particular country is planning to reduce areas of Muslimmajority into Muslim-minority territories. To launch violent struggles to separate from existing states is intolerable for every country, even for a Muslim country. So, what is happening in such places where people are being killed in large numbers in the wake of violent movements for separatism, is the price that Muslims are paying for their wrong policies. What these countries are doing is as defence and not as offence. The Muslims’ duty in every part of the world is only one, that is, dawah work, inviting people to God’s path. Muslims must do peaceful dawah work, and leave all other things to God. Dawah, naturally, demands close interaction with people of other religions—and excellent and very natural opportunities for this exist in countries where Muslims live with people of other faiths. When Muslim ethnic groups in non-Muslim majority countries demand separation and independence they are themselves harming prospects for dawah. The politics of separatism kills the universal spirit. This policy is a political innovation and has nothing to do with Islam. It is instructive to note that Sufis did not have this sort of ghetto mentality, and, instead, actively sought to interact and even live among non-Muslims. They presented Islam before non-Muslims positively. Those in favour of separatism have no justification from Islam; it is their own self-styled Conveying the message requires universality and tolerance, while separatism kills the universal spirit.