Peace Movements in Islam

History, Religion, and Politics

Juan Cole, Juan Cole

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780755643202
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Paz y desarrollo global

Contrary to the distorted and in many places all-too prevalent view of Islam as somehow inherently or uniquely violent, there is a dazzling array of Muslim organizations and individuals that have worked for harmony and conciliation through history. The Qur'an itself, the Muslim scripture, is full of peace verses urging returning good for evil and wishing peace upon harassers, alongside the verses on just, defensive war that have so often been misinterpreted.
This groundbreaking volume fills a gaping hole in the literature on global peace movements, bringing to the fore the many peace movements and peacemakers of the Muslim world. From Senegalese Sufi orders to Bosnian women's organizations to Indian Muslim freedom fighters who were allies of Mahatma Gandhi against British colonialism, it shows that history is replete with colorful personalities from the Muslim world who made a stand for peaceful methods.

1 BETWEEN COMPASSION AND JUSTICE: LOCATING AN ISLAMIC DEFINITION OF PEACE

A. Rashied Omar

In the contemporary period, Islam is frequently depicted as predisposed to conflict and violence. The intractable Middle East conflicts, the attacks on the United States in September 2001, and the subsequent events during the first quarter of the twenty-first century in which Muslim extremists have been implicated in acts of terror have served only to reinforce this widespread perception. Even conventional academic perspectives regard Islam as having a predilection for violence.¹

As a direct consequence of this toxic contemporary context, Muslims are currently living through one of the most challenging periods in their history. Islamophobia and hate crimes are at an all-time high.² Never before in recent history has the Muslim commitment to a more peaceful and human world being challenged as it is at this time.

Against this backdrop, locating the Islamic definition of and role of Muslims in peace is critical. It is a task that I and an increasing number of other Muslim scholars and activists have undertaken and continue to undertake with great passion and commitment, since it counterbalances the current preoccupation with Islam and violence.³

A number of key questions undergird my research on the role of Islam in Peacebuilding:

1) What are the complex causes of the erosion of peace in contemporary Muslim societies?

2) How consonant or disparate is the Islamic definition of peace from that of the leading perspectives?

3) How should the core Islamic values of Compassion and Justice be configured in an Islamic theology of peace?

4) What concrete strategies and practices could Muslim peace activists adopt in pursuit of a more just and humane world?

This chapter addresses the above four questions and concludes with four modest proposals that may create the conditions for the recovery of the Islamic principles of peace and making them part of the fabric of contemporary Muslim culture. I argue that the complex justice struggles in which many Muslim social movements have been engaged during the past century and a half have led to the erosion of the core Islamic value of compassion, and consequently, the loss of peace. It might be expedient to begin with a definition of peace.

The Peace Studies Definition of Peace and Peacebuilding

Like the end state itself, a consensus definition of “peace” is elusive. A number of contending interpretations of peace exist in the literature.⁴ The disparate definitions of peace can be plotted on a horizontal graph, with one axis called negative peace and the other positive peace. Negative peace has also been described as a minimalist definition of peace and positive peace as a maximalist definition. Negative peace is simply the absence of war.

The Islamic perspective is perhaps best compared to that of scholars in the field of international peace studies, which has broadened and deepened the conventional understanding of peace defined simply as the absence of war (negative peace), into recognizing that the underlying conditions of a society, even absent overt violence, predicate the presence of deadly conflict.⁵ This idea, known as positive peace, originated in the work of the Norwegian peace scholar, Johan Galtung, and stresses the recognition of a more indirect, frequently hidden, and insidious form of violence, called structural violence. This form of violence is less dramatic and often works slowly, eroding human values and eventually, human lives. Violence, it is argued, can be built into the very structure of the socio-political, economic, and cultural institutions of a society and has the effect of denying people important rights such as economic opportunity, social and political equality, and human dignity. When children die of starvation or malnutrition, a kind of violence is taking place. Similarly, when human beings suffer from preventable diseases, when they are denied a basic education, housing, the right to freely practice their religion, an opportunity to raise a family, or to participate in their own governance, a kind of violence is taking place even when no blood is shed.⁶

The quintessential example of structural violence is apartheid South Africa. This vicious system institutionalized the oppression and dehumanization of people of color. It legalized racial discrimination, socio-political oppression, and economic exploitation. Writing in support of such a view, David Chidester (1997) contends that under the apartheid system, “violence was everywhere. It was an integral part of the discourses, practices and social formations through which human beings struggled to be human.”⁷

This nuanced understanding of peace as a substantive value has been increasingly embraced among scholars, religious leaders, civil society, state actors, and the United Nations. With this understanding, the practice of peacebuilding extends beyond the laying down of arms to include addressing and transforming the underlying conditions of structural violence and social cleavages, to foster social integration at every level of society, with roles played by actors among the grassroots, civil society, government, and international organizations. The sought-after end state is best described by John Paul Lederach and R. Scott Appleby (2010) as just peace:

The dynamic state of affairs in which the reduction and management of violence and the achievement of social and economic justice are undertaken as mutual, reinforcing dimensions of constructive change. Sustainable transformation of conflict requires more than the (necessary) problem solving associated with mediation, negotiated settlements, and other elements of conflict resolution; it requires the redress of legitimate grievances and the establishment of new relations characterized by equality and fairness according to the dictates of human dignity and the common good.⁸

Positive Peace, Compassion, and Justice in Islam

An examination of the Islamic concept of peace reveals that it is closer to that of positive peace. This is underscored by the strong emphasis the primary source of Islamic guidance, the Qur’an, places on justice as a substantive value.

The Qur’an uses two terms interchangeably to refer to justice: qist and ‘adl, meaning—“to give someone his or her full portion.”⁹ In fact, the Qur’an regards “actions for justice as being the closest thing to piety” (Q5:6). The Qur’anic verses pertaining to justice are often specific about those areas of social affairs wherein lapses are most likely to occur, such as the trusts and legacies of orphans and adopted children (Q4:3; Q33:5), matrimonial relations (Q4:3; Q49:9), contractual and business dealings (Q2:282), judicial matters (Q5:42; Q4:56), interreligious relations (Q60:8), economic relations (Q11:65), and dealing with one’s adversaries (Q5:8). The strong emphasis on justice in the Qur’an has led some Muslim jurists, like the renowned Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (d. 1350), to argue that justice is the raison d’etre of the establishment of religion:

God has sent His Messengers and revealed His Books so that people may establish qist (justice), upon which the heavens and the earth stand. And when the signs of justice appear in any manner, then that is a reflection of the shari’ah and the religion of God.¹⁰

The Islamic concept of peace is integrally related to the struggle for justice. Moreover, Muslims are not alone in this twinning of the two. This focus resonates well with the exhortation from Pope Paul V1 in 1972 that “if you want peace work for justice.”¹¹ It is a clarion call to the redress of legitimate grievances. The numerous struggles for social justice—starting with the anti-colonial movements of the first half of the twentieth century and the continuing struggles against narrow, autocratic elites in the post-colonial period that have been waged in parts of the world with Muslim majority populations—have inevitably led justice to be the central hermeneutical key through which most contemporary Muslims view Islam.

Yet, as important as justice may be in the comprehensive matrix of Islamic values, it is not the preeminent one. Rather, al-Rahman, or the Compassionate One, is undoubtedly the most important attribute of God in Islam. It is the equivalent of the Christian preeminent understanding of God as Love. One of the most well-known Qur’anic verses with which Muslims commence every action is bismillahir rahmanir rahim, translated as, “in the name of God, the Most Compassionate, and the Dispenser of Grace.” Compassion is so central to God’s existence that it embraces all that exists in the universe (Q40:7). The Qur’an describes the Prophet Muhammad’s central mission as rahmatan lil ‘alamin, a source of compassion and mercy to the world (21:107).

Moreover, the Arabic word rahma (compassion, mercy, and tenderness) and its various derivatives occur more than 326 times. According to Imam al-Raghib al-Isfahani (d. 1108/9) in his famous lexicography, Mufradat al-Qur’an (“Vocabulary of the Qur’an), the term rahma means “softening of the heart towards one who deserves our mercy and induces us to do good to him/her.” It is interesting to note that the womb of mother is also called rahm. A mother is always very soft and gentle toward her children (raqiq); she showers love and affection on them.¹²

It is this understanding of Islam that has allowed Muslim mystics, Sufis, to develop the doctrine of what is called sulh-i-Kull, that is, peace with all, which means no violence and no aggressiveness.¹³ In mystical (Sufi) traditions of Islam the greatest form of jihad, personal jihad is to purify the soul and refine the disposition. This is regarded as the far more urgent and momentous struggle and it is based on a prophetic tradition (hadith). Prophet Muhammad is reported to have advised his companions as they return after a battle, “We are returning from the lesser jihad [physical fighting] to the greater jihad al-nafs [disciplining the self].” Sufis have traditionally understood this greater form of jihad to be the spiritual struggle to discipline the lower impulses and base instincts in human nature. The renowned thirteenth-century Sufi teacher, Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273), articulated such an understanding of jihad when he wrote: “The prophets and saints do not avoid spiritual struggle. The first spiritual struggle they undertake is the killing of the ego and the abandonment of personal wishes and sensual desires. This is the greater jihad.”¹⁴

I have thus far argued for an Islamic concept of peace that navigates between two core values in Islam, namely justice and compassion. I have also argued that whenever these two core values of Islam come into tension with each other, compassion trumps justice. In my view, therefore, a struggle for justice (jihad) that claims Islamic legitimacy must locate itself within an ethos of compassion. How then does one balance between the two critical concepts of justice and compassion in constructing a viable project of Muslim peacebuilding?

The numerous struggles for social justice—starting with the anti-colonial wars of the first half of the twentieth century, the watershed Afghan war against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, and the continuing struggles against secular elites in the post-colonial period that have engaged many parts of the world with Muslim majority populations—have inevitably led justice to be the central hermeneutical key through which Muslims view Islam.

This obsession with justice has in turn led to an erosion and exclusion of the central Islamic concept of compassion. The kind of wanton violence into which some Muslim struggles for justice have degenerated can in large measure be attributed to the phenomenon of struggling for justice without compassion. Without compassion, struggles for justice invariably end up mimicking the oppressive orders against which they revolt. And compassion without justice likely leads only to more of the status quo of political, cultural, and social upheaval and pervasive overt and structural violence against Muslims by despotic regimes.

Ironically, it is precisely here that the crisis of contemporary Muslims is located and consequently where the challenge of a credible project on Muslim peacebuilding resides. How can the central Islamic concept of compassion be recovered and reinvigorated such that it once again becomes part of the fabric of contemporary Muslim culture? This is indeed the critical challenge facing contemporary Muslims.

Proposals for Muslim Peacebuilding

I suggest four modest proposals that may create the conditions out of which a credible Muslim role in peacebuilding could be spawned. My suggestions emerge primarily from my own assessment of the current geo-political realities and the corresponding Muslim crisis of extremism.

First, Muslims themselves must not become weary from stating again and again both loudly and unequivocally, that acts of wanton violence and barbarism are contrary to the teachings of Islam. And the news media must do more to make sure their voices are heard. In Islamic ethics, the end does not justify the means. Religious extr...