TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

Quran nor in the Hadith. Neither have any of our scholars of Muslim jurisprudence made any such claim. In fact, not a single Muslim ruler ever issued a command that when it is time for the Muslims to pray, non-Muslims cannot play their trumpets or ring their bells in their places of worship. This being the case, why should one get so agitated about this matter? If someone rings a bell, he has a right to do so just like you are using your right to call others for prayer on a loudspeaker. This explanation was not accepted by the people. In India, most communal riots are triggered off by such small incidents. What is the reason for this? When the Islamic Shariah has not ordered us to stop non-Muslim processions passing by our mosques with their music and singing, and when it has not commanded us to prohibit nonMuslims from ringing bells in front of our places of worship, why do Muslims want to do so? The reason for this is entirely communal, not religious. As a result of the politics of a hundred or more years, Muslims have turned such things into a supposed symbol of their communal honour. They have made them a question of their honour. If a non-Muslim procession playing music passes by their mosque, they take it as a personal insult. And if they manage to stop the procession, they imagine they have boosted their community’s prestige. This is an entirely un-Islamic approach. God and His Prophet certainly do not prescribe this. It is only their own egos that instigate some Muslims to behave in this manner. Their egos want to provoke them against other people, people who Muslims should be inviting to God. These Muslims’ egos stoke the fires of communal hatred and make sure that they can never relate to others as Muslims should, because when Muslims and others are divided by intense suspicion and hatred, the task of dawah—inviting others to God—which Muslims should engage in, can never happen. Needless to say, far from being rewarded by God for stoking communal conflict, it is very much possible that by giving their communal foolishness a so-called ‘Islamic’ label, such Muslims will be punished by God. o An insincere man will refuse to accept any evidence or argument that does not suit his way of thinking. He will use every means to rebut this evidence, raising all sorts of unrelated and irrelevant debates in order to obfuscate matters.