TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

and the practice of Muslims, on the other. At least one root cause may be traced to historical exigency. Since time immemorial, military commanders have been accorded positions of great eminence in the annals of history. It is a universal phenomenon that the military hero has been idolized even in peace time and is treated as a model for the people. It is this placing of heroism in the militaristic context which has been the greatest underlying factor in the undue stress laid on war in the latter phase of Muslim history. With the automatic accord in Muslim society of a place of honour and importance to the heroes of the battlefield, the annalists’ subsequent compilations of Muslim history have tended to read like an uninterrupted series of wars and conquests. These early chronicles having set such a precedent, subsequent writings on Muslim history followed the same pattern of emphasis on militarism. The Prophet’s biographies were called Maghazi, that is, The Battles Fought by the Prophet, yet the Prophet Muhammad in fact did battle only three times in his entire life, and the period of his involvement in these battles did not total more than one and a half days. He fought let it be said, in self-defence, when hemmed in by aggressors, where he simply had no other option. But Muslim historians—lying in the face of fact—have converted his whole life into one of confrontation and war. We must keep in mind that the Prophet Muhammad was born at a time when an atmosphere of militancy prevailed in Arab society, there being, in the view of the Arabs of that time no other path to justice. But the Prophet always opted for the avoidance of conflict. For instance, in the campaign of Ahzab, the Prophet advised his Companions to dig a trench between them and the opponents, thus preventing a headon clash. Another well-known instance of the Prophet’s dislike for hostilities is the Hudaibiya peace treaty, in which the Prophet accepted all the conditions of the the other party. In the case of the conquest of Makkah, he avoided a battle altogether by making a rapid entry into the city with ten thousand Muslims—a number large enough to awe his opponents into submission. In this way, on all occasions the Prophet endeavoured to achieve his objectives by peaceful rather than by warlike means. It is, therefore, unconscionable that in later biographical writings about the Prophet, many of the events of his life have been arranged under the heading of ‘battles’ (ghazawat). How he managed to It is this placing of heroism in the militaristic context which has been the greatest underlying factor in the undue stress laid on war in the latter phase of Islam’s history.