Page 103 - Non-violence and peace-building

Non-violence and Peace-building in Islam

will wrongly try to justify this by saying, “When others
are trying to provoke us, how can we not be provoked?”
In the course of seeking to prove other religions to
be inferior, they will loudly declare, ‘Prophethood ends
with our Prophet’. But they are completely heedless of
the task of conveying the teachings of their prophet to
other communities.

The fact is that this kind of psyche is the actual root
of all sorts of strife, including communal riots. When
religion becomes something to take pride in and boast
about, the logical consequence is the emergence of a
strong sense of what can be called a false superiority
complex. People infected with this complex believe that
they are always right and that others are always wrong.
A natural result of this is that their behaviour vis-à-vis
others becomes completely unrealistic. Such people
revel in talking about the faults of others, but they are
never ready to accept their own faults. They will live in
a way as if they alone have the right to do as they please
and that others have no such right.
Obviously, people who think like this cannot live in
harmony with others. Their presence in this world can
only give rise to riots and conflicts and other forms of
strife. Needless to say, they can never play any role in
building peace. People with this sort of mentality can
only spread corruption and filth in this world. To live in
this world with this sort of psyche is to live in an ungodly
way. And those who want to live in God’s world in an
ungodly way can never succeed.

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