Page 71 - Non-violence and peace-building

Non-violence and Peace-building in Islam

proves costly for a community. As someone has very
aptly put it:
The cheaper the politician, the more he costs his
country.

I would like to cite an instance here—of an
internationally-renowned Islamic institution in India.
The authorities of this institution once played a key role
in Indian politics. The solution they devised to solve
the problems of the Indian Muslims was to insist that
Muslims must damage their opponents. They claimed
that sometimes communities have to give proof of their
capacity to damage others in order to teach them a
lesson and said that this is what the Muslims of India,
too, should do. Until Muslims demonstrated that they
could cause damage to others, they argued, their right
to lead a respectable life in this country would not be
accepted.
In 1967, general elections were round the corner in
the country. In accordance with this institution’s recipe
of inflicting damage on others, it called for Muslims to
support opposition parties in the upcoming elections
and defeat the then ruling Congress Party. Vast numbers
of Muslims were taken in by this appeal, and so this
institution became for a short while (1966-67) the
headquarters, as it were, of Muslim politics in India.

This, then, was the ‘solution’ that this Islamic
institution presented for solving the problems of
Muslims. But when, just a few years later, in 1974, this
very same institution was faced with a serious internal
crisis, it adopted a totally opposite approach! While it

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