Peace is Life, War is Death

Jun 2, 2002, 01.00am IST
Firoz Bakht Ahmed.

It was said of Prophet Mohammed that God wanted him to be an example of how to live peacefully among others like a simple man, to nurture a family, to work for a living and to accept equally the joys and sorrows of life.


But there are some who, while professing loyalty to Islam, are actually doing more harm than good. For instance, Osama bin Laden’s brand of ‘‘Islamic jehad’’ is utterly un-Islamic and goes against all tenets of Islam. In Islam, taking an innocent life is equated to killing the whole of humanity.

Osama is not a true Muslim. He is not even a jehadi as jehad is waged not against non- Muslims but against ignorance and suppression. Osama and his ilk have done more harm to Islam than any of the other so-called enemies of Islam. The very meaning of Islam is to submit and never to offend.

The Prophet abhorred war that crippled and maim-ed people both in body and mind and believed that the aim of all people irrespective of the religions they follow, is to co-exist in a manner that mutually benefits everyone. All countries should collectively shun violence and war. We should strive to follow what Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of ahimsa, entreated all human beings to follow: the principle of non-violence.

In Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, Ved Mehta writes that once during the communal riots in Noakhali, Bengal, Gandhi said that the country had become clearly divided between two expressions of religion. The choice for us is between the ‘religion’ of terrorism and true religion that has always advocated peace, communal harmony and mutual co-existence.

True religion propagates compassion, fellow feeling, selflessness and self-transformation. Regarding the call of “Do or die!” Gandhi interpreted the slogan thus: Its true essence has nothing to do with aggression of any sort.

“Do here means Hindus and Mussulmans should learn to live together in peace and amity. Otherwise I should die in the attempt”, suggested Gandhi. When someone asked Gandhi his views on war, his reply was just one word: ahimsa. Ahimsa for Gandhi was not merely a negative state of harmlessness but a positive state of love, of doing good even to the evil-doer. He believed that in a war, there is no victor, only losers.

Those who propagate war don’t know really what war means today. If they did, they wouldn’t propagate war. Even more than the millions who will surely die an instant death, life for survivors would only mean something worse than even death, in the aftermath of a nuclear detonation that would leave behind a lingering and harmful radioactivity. A nuclear exchange, even the most constricted one, would devastate the entire region. In such a war, there can be no victor.

Today’s nuclear weapons contain a lethal potential that will make even the atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki appear to be mere shadows.

How should we get ourselves out of this combat mode? First, we must try and clear our minds of all clutter. Next, we should cultivate a positive attitude so that we can face any kind of confrontation with a composure and patience that is absolutely necessary to rein in whipped up passions.

Only then can we generate solutions that are reasonable and peaceful. Gandhi stressed that it was wrong to be obsessed with battles and their results. He was anguished by the brutal riots during Partition. He said: “Without ahimsa there is neither Pakistan nor Hindustan; only slavery awaits both the nations torn asunder by mutual strife and engrossed in barbarity”.

For every conflict there is always an amicable and concordant solution. War is not a solution as with its seemingly territorial victory, it rather exacerbates the hardships of the peoples of the countries at war. Peace is life. War is death.
 




Sacred Space

Jun 2, 2002, 12.53am IST


World in Arms


What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

Mahatma Gandhi
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Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. Martin Luther King, Jr

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

Dwight Eisenhower
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People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

George Orwell