BOOK REVIEW

BOOK REVIEW Name of the Book: Non-Violence and Peace-Building in Islam Author: Maulana Wahiduddin Khan Published by: Goodword Books, New Delhi (India) (www.goodwordbooks.com) Year: 2017 Pages: 127 ISBN: 978-93-5179-158-4 Reviewed by: Mohsin Khan HARDLY a day passes without the media reporting some violent barbarity somewhere in the world being committed in the name of Islam. Today, there is an urgent need for popularizing an alternate understanding of Islam, one rooted in a commitment to peace, nonviolence and intercommunity harmony. Peace and prosperity for all peoples, not just Muslims alone, crucially depends on this. Promoting that understanding of Islam has been one of the major concerns of New Delhi-based Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan over a great part of his life. In this latest book of his, a collection of 21 short but deeply insightful essays, he persuasively argues the case for nonviolence as a means for negotiating differences, based on his understanding of Islam. In his Introduction, Maulana remarks that because today the world is so closely interdependent, peaceful, mutually-beneficial relations between different religious communities have become simply indispensable. “We simply cannot afford to resort to conflict in order to resolve disputes,” he rightly notes. In the face of what he says is “the serious