INTERVIEW WITH MAULANA WAHIDUDDIN KHAN

Maulana Saheb, you have addressed important issues and tried to dispel many misunderstandings about Islam in this book. You also mention that Islam is based on the ideology of peace. But why is there so much misunderstanding about Islam? The misunderstandings do not arise from the scripture. Misunderstandings arise from altered temporal and spatial situations. Scriptures contain eternal teachings. When Muslims entered the new age and faced challenges from western civilizations and other new powers, they concluded that to face these challenges, they must engage in jihad. They started doing jihad in the sense of armed struggle, and they interpreted Islam based on it. In contrast, when I studied this challenge deeply, I realized that the Muslims could have faced this challenge only through peace. There was no need for an armed struggle. In fact, the modern civilization brought new thought, new technology, and new science. It was a completely peaceful civilization. It is my understanding that the modern civilization is based on peace, and not on violence. Muslims wrongly concluded that jihad was needed to defeat this civilization. This was the point of derailment of Muslim thought. Through this book, I have tried to bring Muslims back on the right track. You have used the word jihad. What is the meaning of jihad? Jihad literally means to strive, to struggle. It means peaceful struggle for a noble cause. That is jihad. Because of the misinterpretation of the word jihad, people mistakenly understood the meaning of jihad as armed warfare. If you consult a dictionary to find meaning of this word, you will find that the meaning of jihad is to strive and struggle. In fact, jihad of the new age was that Muslims should move forward in education, science, industry, and technology, instead Muslims started engaging in violent activities. This was a derailment from the right path of Islam. I have dedicated my entire life towards bringing this derailment back to the right track. This means that the daily struggles and efforts we make in our daily life to improve our lives or do constructive work or develop spirituality in ourselves, do you think this is also jihad? Of course, the Prophet has labelled it as a great jihad, i.e., jihad-e-akbar. Fighting with your desires, shunning the whims, struggling to protect yourself from negativity, trying to keep yourself on positive thinking, such acts are labelled as the greater jihad by the Prophet.