The True Jihad
Non-Violence and Islam
~ 62 ~
time there were two major empires, the Byzantine
and the Sassanid, to both of which the reform
movement in Arabia posed a challenge. As a result,
these empires wanted to crush it. The Prophet’s
companions therefore faced stiff resistance, but by
God’s succour they were successful in their mission
and the coercive system, termed “absolute
imperialism” by the French historian Henri Pirenne,
was uprooted.
It took this revolutionary event to end a coercive
system which had been established for centuries
and replace it with a system based on freedom. This
goal could not have been achieved in its first stage.
But by divine succour Islam succeeded in breaking
the historical continuity of this ancient coercive
system in the 7th century. Subsequently, this
change affected all of human history and as a
continual process, ebbed and flowed until it reached
its culmination in the 20th century. Then came the
de-centralization which took place at the beginning
of the 20th century, political power being limited
solely to the administration. And the interference of
political institutions became very limited. Social
departments became generally independent of it.
