INTERDEPENDENCE—A LAW OF NATURE

within local society without asserting any special religious identity. Despite Makkah’s non-Muslim majority and fierce opposition to his message, the Prophet deeply loved the city and said that he would not have left it had he not been forced. Throughout early Islamic history, no notion of Muslims being a separate nation existed. This idea only surfaced in the 19th and 20th centuries under political pressure, falsely attributed to Islam. After migrating to Madinah, the Prophet established a formal covenant with the city’s non-Muslim tribes. A significant clause affirmed: “The Jews of Banu Awf are one community with the believers. Jews have their religion, and Muslims have their religion.” (Sirat Ibn Hisham, Vol 2, p 107) This covenant, which extended to other tribes as well, set a clear model of coexistence based on mutual respect and shared civic identity. The Quran also clarifies Islamic concept of nationality. It does not define nationality by religion, but by a shared homeland. The term millat refers to religious affiliation, whereas qawmiyat refers to the bond formed through common land. Attempts to redefine nationality along religious lines are distortions introduced by later political ideologies, not by Islamic thought. The Quran states: ‘Mankind! We have created you from a male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes, so that you might come to know each other.’ (49: 13) Here, people are national groupings based on land, and tribes are family-based lineages. Classical scholars such as Abu Rawq al Hamadani interpreted nations as groups sharing cities, villages, and territories, reinforcing the idea that geography, not religion, shapes national identity. Islam’s teachings about relations between Muslims and nonMuslims further invalidate separationist ideologies. The twonation theory stands in contrast to Islam’s inclusive and universal message. The Quran and Prophet’s example show that national identity is rooted in mutual coexistence, not in religious division.