The Prophet Muhammad A simple Guide to his Life
The Power of Peace
~ 254 ~
evidence that there is only defensive war in Islam. It
is absolutely unlawful for the believers to wage an
offensive war. The Islamic method is entirely based
on the principle of non-violence. Islam does not
allow for violence in any circumstance except that
of unavoidable defence.
THE PRESENT AGE AND NON-VIOLENCE
The greatest problem facing Islam in present
times, to my way of thinking, is that Muslims
have consigned the
sunnah
of non-violence to
oblivion. In more recent times, when Muslims
faced such problems as that of Palestine, the fall of
the Mughal empire, and the Turkish caliphate,
they fell prey to negative reaction on such a large
scale that they completely forgot that the policy of
Islam was that of non-violence and not of
violence. It is as a result of this deviation from the
teachings of Islam that even after a I00-year long
bloody war, there has been no positive outcome.
The outcome has, in fact, been the reverse. They
have lost to an indescribable and unimaginable
extent what still remained to them after losing
their empires.
