TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE We often talk of peace in the context of war. But this is a very narrow and restricted notion of peace. Peace is deeply linked with the entirety of human life. Peace is a complete ideology in itself. Peace is the only religion for both—man and the universe. It is the master-key that opens the doors to every success. Peace creates a favourable atmosphere for success in every endeavour. Without peace, no positive action—small or big—is possible. IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION Maulana Wahiduddin Khan wrote extensively about peace, spirituality, selfhelp and personal improvement. Through his literature, he aimed to reengineer minds towards peace and to network for global peace and unity. T HE above words describe the CPS mission. Through literature means through education. If we need to usher in an era of peace, what we need to promote is to educate the humankind. The field of education, covering ethics, religion, skills and general knowledge, is a very broad and very vital one. The importance of learning in enabling the individual to put his potentials to optimal use is self-evident. Without education, the training of the human minds is incomplete. No individual is a human being in the proper sense until he has been educated. Education makes man a right thinker and a correct decision-maker. It achieves this by bringing him knowledge from the external world, teaching him to reason, and acquainting him with past history, so that he may be a better judge of the present. Without education, man, as it were, is shut up in a windowless room. With education, he finds himself in a room with all its windows open to the outside world. This is why Islam attaches such great importance to knowledge and education. The Quran, it should be noted repeatedly, asks us to observe the earth and heavens. This instils in man the desire to learn natural science. When the Quran began to be revealed, the first word of its first verse was “Iqra” that is ‘Read’. Education is thus the starting point of every successful human activity.