Page 148 - Age of Peace Goodword.indd

The Vatican as a Principle

was sworn in as president for the second time on January 20,
2013. In the beginning, he was very hopeful of bringing about
a change in America under his presidency. But even after
serving for two terms, he has not been able to bring about the
desired change in his country. He himself admitted this fact on
June 18, 2015:
‘I am frustrated, and you have every right to be frustrated,
because Congress doesn’t work the way it should. Issues
are left untended. Folks are more interested in scoring
political points than getting things done – not because
any individual member of Congress is a bad person
– there are a lot of good, well-meaning, hardworking
people out there – but because the incentives that have
been built into the system reward short term, reward
a polarized politics, reward being simplistic instead of
being true, reward division. And as mightily as I have
struggled against that, it still is broken.’ 1
This statement has a great lesson for those Muslim activists
who are fighting for the same unrealistic goal, that is, to bring
about change through political power. Almost all political
leaders have been obsessed with political authority. They
wanted to acquire political position so that they would be able
to bring about change. But history tells us that this is a case of
having exaggerated expectations of political power, because
when these leaders acquired political authority, they were still
unable to bring about any real change.

History shows that no one has been able to bring about
change through political activism. According to the law of
nature, real change always comes through peaceful struggle
in non-political fields.
For his 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein used the word
Umm al-Ma’arik (Mother of All Battles). But this proved to
be a complete failure. Had Saddam Hussein, on the contrary,

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