TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

The so-called Muslim Mujahideen have been exhorting their coreligionists to do battle all over the world. But the Quran says, "God calls to the home of peace" (10: 25). It is up to right-thinking people everywhere to reject the militant version of Islam, and to start seeing and accepting Islam as it is truly represented by the Quran. POLITICAL INTERPRETATION OF ISLAM The second reason for the violence perpetrated in the name of Islam is the erroneous political interpretation of Islam by some Muslim scholars. According to this interpretation a central place was bestowed on politics in the religion. For those scholars who gave such an interpretation, the religion or deen was tantamount to establishing its political domination. They saw this as the very purpose or goal that God wants His servants to strive towards. Naturally then, in this understanding of Islam, the rest of deen came to be subordinated to politics. Politics assumed the central place, through which every aspect of deen could be understood and its importance ascertained. In this way, in their understanding of Islam, every aspect of it acquired a political hue. This naturally resulted in a major deviation. The political interpretation of the religion of Islam led to a new view about life and the universe in which politics had a pre-eminent place. While accepting that God has given free-will to mankind, and the world is a testing ground on one hand, the proposers of the political interpretation contradict themselves by saying that people must establish the divinely revealed Shariah which was conveyed through God’s messengers. This law covers a wide gamut of issues, including beliefs, morals, society, civilization and politics. In addition, the political theory finds it necessary to accept God as the Emperor, Ruler and Law maker. They further go on to say that, if someone simply accepts God and believes Him to have no partners, but at the same time, claims to be fully independent in the sphere in which humans have free-will, he actually revolts against God. According to them such people should be set right through guidance, instruction, exhortation and preaching, but if these methods fail to get them the desired result of establishing Divine Government, then a believer is compelled to take to war so that he can remove the hurdles in the path of this task. The above interpretation of deen presents God’s sending of the prophets to the world in a particular political light. Assuming that the prophets’ concern was to acquire power and that they had acquired it,