Page 57 - Non-violence and peace-building

Non-violence and Peace-building in Islam

will use every means to rebut this evidence, raising all
sorts of unrelated and irrelevant debates in order to
obfuscate matters. If someone convincingly answers
his arguments, he will set off a new debate, simply in
order to refuse to change his stance. Such a person is
unwilling and unable to see things as they are.
Once, I met some Muslims from a certain town.
Some days before this, a small inter-communal riot had
erupted in that town. As is my wont, I spoke about the
need to act with patience. But the men said, “In our
town, Muslims did not do anything provocative. It was
people from the other community who unnecessarily
started fighting with us.”

I asked them how the riot had started.
They replied, “In our town, there is a mosque. Just
next to it is a place of worship of our non-Muslim
brethren. When we placed a loudspeaker in the mosque
to announce the call to prayer, the non-Muslims began
ringing bells at the time of their prayers. The sound of
the bells could be heard inside the mosque. And so, we
told these people, ‘Please don’t ring your bells while
we are praying.’ But they did not listen to us. When we
repeatedly asked them to stop ringing their bells, they
got angry. And that is how the riot started.”

I said to the men, “What Shariah-related issue is this
that you insist that during the Muslim prayer-time a non-
Muslim should not ring a bell in his place of worship?
Such a thing is mentioned neither in the Quran nor in
the Hadith. Neither have any of our scholars of Muslim
jurisprudence made any such claim. In fact, not a single

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