TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

regime expanded, and soon it became a ‘superpower’ in the form of the Soviet Union. Following this, the world witnessed the confrontation of two warring blocks, one represented by the Soviet Union and the other represented by the USA. The conflict between these two blocks ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, class war, too, came to an end for all practical purposes. But influenced by the Communist movement, a new ideological age came into being, which can be called the Age of Ideological War. Ideological war did not get much support at the global level. But among Muslims it did obtain widespread popularity. The 20th century witnessed the emergence of several Muslim ideologues who invented a political interpretation of Islam, which was geared to fuelling ideological wars. This political interpretation of Islam gained widespread acceptance among Muslims across the world. Put briefly, the political interpretation of Islam projects Islam as a complete socio-political system. According to proponents of this theory, it is the religious duty of the Muslim ummah to establish this system over the entire world. These people believe that all systems other than the ‘Islamic system’ that exist in the world are evil and false. They contend that the raison d’etre of the Muslim ummah is to put a complete end to every sort of what they call these ‘evil’ systems, no matter what the cost, and to replace these systems with the ‘Islamic system’. In the 20th century, a number of powerful movements emerged among Muslims in different parts of the world fired with this objective. These movements began disseminating their ideas through writings. But when they saw it was not possible to do away with the dominant forces through simply publishing and disseminating literature, they tried to topple the dominant forces by participating in elections in their respective countries. But they failed to achieve their objective this way too. After this, they began violent wars against dominant forces in different parts of the world. But here too they failed to obtain any success. Despite enormous efforts, it proved to be impossible for them to remove the dominant forces from power, establish their own political dominance and march towards their dream of global ‘Islamic government’. After this, these movements moved into a third and very deadly phase, which is generally called ‘suicide-bombing’. Their followers were now ready to kill themselves in violent attacks in the hope of thereby destabilizing their supposed enemies and breaking their power.