TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

Peace is God’s Name The Quran puts on record the many names or attributes of God, one of them being As-Salam, that is, Peace. God loves peace and security so much that He chose Peace as one of His names. That is to say, that God Himself is the embodiment of peace. Al-Qurtubi, has explained this verse in these words: God is the Being from Whom all people feel safe and secure. From Whom people have the experience only of peace, not of violence. God has set the highest conceivable standards. When God’s dealings with human beings are based on peace and security, then man should also deal with other human beings in a peaceable manner, and not with harshness or violence. No Extremism In the fourth chapter of the Quran the following injunction has been given: Do not go to extremes in your religion. (4: 171) The same point has been made in a Hadith. The Prophet of Islam observed: You should restrain yourselves from committing excesses (ghulu) in religion, for it was due to their having gone to extremes in religion that the previous communities were destroyed. (Al-Nasai, Ibn Majah, Musnad Ahmad) Ghulu means extremism. The way of extremism is wrong, whatever the circumstances, for it goes against the spirit of religion. Indeed, it is proneness to extremism which at times culminates in war and violence. Those who have extremist tendencies remain dissatisfied with the path of moderation, since this strikes them as being far from the ideal. That is why they so easily incline towards violence, and are ever ready to open hostilities in the name of achieving their objectives. Moderation, which is the opposite of extremism, is closely interlinked with peace. When people possess the virtue of moderation, they Muslim practices ought to be judged by the criteria of Islam—which is an ideology—rather than Islam be judged by Muslim practices.