Islam Rediscovered
10. Islam As It Is
~ 140 ~
engaged in war. At that time some senior
Companions were present in Makkah and Madinah.
But they did not join these wars, one prominent
name being that of Abdullah ibn Umar ibn Khattab.
He did not approve of these wars, therefore he
remained away from them. Some of those involved
in these wars came to him and said: God has
commanded us in the Qur’an to fight against
fitna
(persecuation). Then why do you not join with us in
these wars? Abdullah ibn Umar replied that “the
command of the Qur’an to fight against
fitna
is not
what you hold to be
fitna. Fitna
meant religious
persecution and we have already fought and put an
end to this
fitna (qad fa‘alna)
. Therefore now after the
removal of this obstacle, we have to engage
ourselves in peaceful
da‘wah
work, rather than
initiating hostilities and creating new
fitna
once
again, which is akin to creating new obstacles for
peaceful Islamic
da’wah
(al-Bukhari, Sahih,
Kitab at-
Tafsir
, under
al-Baqarah
and
al-Anfal
).
Abdullah ibn Umar had made an extremely
pertinent point at the most appropriate time, but
this point of view was not forcefully taken up by
others. Afterwards when the Islamic sciences were
