The Muslim World. DECEMBER 2002 ISSUE

While such degradation of the human spirit is taking hold of our modern time and threatening to plague the future, more honest voices are calling for a total halt of weapons race, and the introduction of peaceful and just solutions to political problems. It is a universal acknowledgement that war and peace are deep-seated properties of the human soul. It is also said that political will is rooted in the human will. Thus, the road to achieving political control begins by mastering self-control among individuals, states, and political figures.

Unless man recalls the meaning of his creation and the message God has entrusted him with – by learning to live in peace with fellow men and women, all current efforts to work for global peace will crumble as all previous efforts have so far.

French Muslims to get single representative body
Paris: France’s five million Muslims are for the first time to be organized within a single representative body authorized to press their interests before the government, under an agreement signed by the country’s three main Muslim groups on Dec 9. The deal was revealed in a television interview by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who said it would give “our compatriots of the Muslim confession the right to live out their faith just like Catholics, like Jews and like Protestants.”

God-given peace and security shall stop thriving and can fast be overthrown by fear and horror unless man is allowed a real change in heart and intentions. In other words, a shift from wicked emotions to Godly and righteous inclinations. In the words of the Holy Quran: “This is because God would never change the blessings with which He has graced a people unless they change their inner selves” (8:52). In this context, the Holy Bible says: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 7:18). In this respect religious principles and spiritual training are vitally important in realizing such benevolent change in the human behaviour.

Humanity has by now undergone enough experimentation whereby sheer power was used to establish iniquitous types of peace. Today we remorsefully watch as if history was repeating itself. In the horizon we can sense the formation of a New World Order that depends only and solely on armed force. Today, the power of weapons is used again for all the transmission of values and the alternation of cultures and religious beliefs. We are confident that today’s attempts for coercive domination will not be crowned with success and what previous powers couldn’t achieve yesterday cannot be achieved today, but as happened in the past, humanity will most certainly end up paying a heavy price of suffering.

The lesson that humankind should have drawn from previous experiences is that peace cannot be propelled by might but only by Justice. Similarly, all nations should be partner in the making of peace, as well as, reapers of its fruits under the rule of impartiality and equity.

However, in the absence of freedom and justice, oppressed nations will one-day revolt against the oppressor because dignity and longing for freedom are articles of faith which cannot be stifled. Denying peoples their rights in practicing their religious beliefs or preserving their cultural identity will eventually set the stage for a ticking bomb waiting to explode. Indeed, the Holy Quran warns believers against the signs of unfairness and oppression: “O, you who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves, or your own parents and kinfolks” (4: 135).

The Prophet of Islam, may Allah bless his soul, cautioned on many occasions against injustice, which he said to be the thick darkness enveloping the sinful on doomsday. He conveyed a saying attributed to God Himself: “O, my servants I have prohibited injustice on myself, so do not wrong one another.”