Peace, or harmony in human relations, is a basic value of Islam. It is not merely the absence of war or organized violence but also the presence of justice and the creation of conditions in which humans can realize their full potentials. Quran says, ‘O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may come to know one another. Verily the most honoured among you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you. (49:13) Islam is a religion that is based on the principles of peace, justice, and equality. From a religious or spiritual perspective peace building makes explicit the connection between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ peace. The need of inner peace is a universal need. There is nobody on this planet that does not desire inner peace. It is not a desire that is new to our time; rather, it is something that everybody has been searching for throughout the ages, regardless of colour, creed, religion, race, nationality, age, sex, wealth, ability or technological advancement. People have taken a variety of different paths in trying to achieve inner peace, some through accumulating material possessions and wealth, others through drugs; some through music, others through meditation; some through their husbands and wives, others through their careers and some through their children’s achievements. And the list goes on. Inner peace is for the most part of our lives very elusive; we never seem to get our hands on it. Many of us mistake personal pleasures for inner peace; we achieve elements of pleasure from a variety of things, be it wealth, sexual relations or other than that. But these do not last, they come and go. Yes we have personal pleasures from time to time and we are pleased with various things from time to time, but this is not inner peace. True inner peace is a sense of stability and contentment which carries us through all the trials and difficulties of life. Allah says: “Verily, I have created man in toil (struggle).” (Al-Balad 90:4) This is the nature of our lives; we are in toil and struggle, ups and downs, times of difficulties and time of ease. It is a life full of tests as Allah says: “And certainly, We shall test you with something of fear, hunger, loss of wealth, lives and fruits, but give glad tidings to as-Saabirin (the patient ones, etc.).” (Al-Baqarah 2:155) To deal with our circumstances, the circumstances of toil and struggle in which we live, patience is the key. But if we go back to the inner peace that we are looking for, then patience cannot manifest itself if we do not have that inner peace. We are living in a world of toil and struggle, but yet within ourselves it is possible to attain inner peace, peace with the environment, with the world in which we live. Obviously there are some obstacles which prevent us from attaining peace. The first step is to identify the obstacles themselves. We have to be aware of them, because if we cannot identify them then we cannot remove them. The second step is to accept them as obstacles within ourselves. For example anger is one of the biggest obstacles to inner peace, for example. If a person is angry worked up and has blown a fuse, how can he or she have inner peace in that circumstance? It is not possible. So the person needs to recognize that anger is an obstacle to inner peace. However, if a person states that, “Yes, it is an obstacle but I do not get angry”, then such a person has a problem. He has not accepted that obstacle as a problem and is in a state of self denial. As such he cannot remove it. If we look at the obstacles in life we can put them under a variety of headings: personal problems, family issues, financial dilemmas, work pressures and spiritual confusion. And there are many issues under these headings. We have so many problems, so many obstacles that they are like illnesses. If we try to deal with them one by one we will never get through them. We need to identify them, put them in some general categories and tackle them as a group as opposed to trying to tackle each individual obstacle and problem. To do this we have to first of all remove obstacles that are beyond our control. We have to be able to distinguish which obstacles are within our control and which ones are beyond our control. While we perceive the ones that are beyond our control as obstacles the reality is that they are not. They are the things that Allah has destined for us in our lives, they are not really obstacles, but we have misinterpreted them as being obstacles. So the obstacles that are beyond our control, we may dislike them and we may want to change them, and some actually people spend a lot of money trying to change them. Michael Jackson is a classic example. He was born black in a world that favours white people, so he spent a lot of money trying to change himself but he only ended up making a mess of himself. Inner peace can only be achieved if the obstacles that are beyond our control are accepted by us patiently as part of Allah’s destiny. Know that whatever happens which we had or have no control over, then Allah has put in it some good, whether or not we are able to grasp what is good in it; the good is still there. So we accept it! There are other obstacles or rather things which are perceived as obstacles in our life. These are things in which we cannot figure out what is beyond them. A thing happens and we do not know why, we do not have an explanation for it. For some people this drives them into disbelief. If one listens to an atheist he has no inner peace and has rejected God. Why did that person become an atheist? It is abnormal to disbelieve in God, whereas it is normal for us to believe in God because Allah created us with a natural inclination to believe in Him. Allah says: “So set you (O Muhammad) your face towards the religion of pure Islamic Monotheism Hanifa (worship none but Allah Alone) Allah’s Fitrah (i.e. Allah’s Islamic Monotheism), with which He has created mankind. No change let there be in Khalq¬illah (i.e. the Religion of Allah Islamic Monotheism), that is the straight religion, but most of men know not.” (Ar-Rum 30:30).
“Making peace between people is better than (nafl) charity, fasting, and prayer. Allah (swt) and His Prophet (pbuh) encourage peace-making, quarrelling should be avoided, even when people speak rudely to us, we should respond with peace.Making peace is the primary goal in times of conflict and as long as people do not fight us, we should treat them in a peaceful manner.”
The Prophet Muhammad (sall-Allaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said: “Every child is born with a pure nature (as a Muslim with a natural inclination to believe on God)…” (Sahih al-Bukhari & Sahih Muslim) This is the nature of human beings, but a person who becomes an atheist without having been taught it from childhood usually does so because of a tragedy. If a tragedy happens in their life they have no explanations as to why it happened. There are things, things which are apparently negative, things which happen in our lives which seem to be obstacles to inner peace because we do not understand them or why they happened to us, but we have to put them aside. They are from Allah and we have to believe that ultimately there is good behind them, whether we can see it or not. Then we move on to those things that we can change. First we identify them, then we move to the second major step and that is removing the obstacles by developing solutions for them. To remove the obstacles we have to focus mostly on self-change and this is because Allah says: “Verily! Allah will not change the good condition of a people as long as they do not change their state of good within themselves…” (Ra’d 13:11) The Prophet (sall-Allaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) told us to try to be patient, so externally we should give that façade of being patient even when internally we are boiling. And we do not try to be patient externally in order to deceive people; rather, we do so in order to develop patience. If we are consistent in this then the external image of patience also becomes internal and as a result complete patience is achieved and is achievable as mentioned in the Hadith quoted above. Among the methods is to look at how the material elements of our lives play a major part with regards to patience and us achieving it. The Prophet (sall-Allaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) gave us advice on how to deal with these elements by saying: “Do not look to those above you who are more fortunate, instead, look to those below you or less fortunate…” This is because no matter what our situation is, there are always those who are worse off than us. This should be our general strategy with regards to the material life. Nowadays the material life is a huge part of our life, we seem to be obsessed with it; gaining all we can in this world seems to be the main point that most of us focus our energies towards. So if one must do this then they should not let it affect their inner peace. While dealing with the material world we should not keep focusing on those who are better off than us otherwise we will never be satisfied with what we have. The Prophet (sall-Allaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said: “If you give the son of Adam a valley of gold he would want another one.” (Sahih Muslim) We have to keep in mind that a person will not get from this world except what Allah has already written for them, this is the bottom line. After all that running around, staying up late at night, being a workaholic a person will only get that which Allah has already destined for him or her. The Prophet (sall-Allaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said: “Whoever sets the Hereafter as his goal, Allah gathers his affairs for him, gives him richness of (faith in) the heart and the world will come to him grudgingly and submissively.” (Ibn Maajah & Ibn Hibbaan) Such a person attains richness of the heart. Richness is not about having a lot of wealth, but richness is having wealth of the heart, and what is wealth of the heart? It is contentment, and this is where the peace comes from, when a person submits themselves to Allah, and this is Islam. The inner peace is accepting Islam in our hearts and living by the principles of Islam. So Allah will put richness in a person’s heart and this world will come to him submissively, on its knees and humbled. such a person will not have to chase it. This is the Promise of the Prophet (sall-Allaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) if a person puts “first things first”, and that is the Hereafter. If it is Paradise that we want then that should be manifest in our lives, it should be the point of our focus, what we keep putting in the forefront. So how do we know when the Hereafter is our focus? If we sit down with a person and all we talk about are the latest cars, expensive houses, travelling and holidays and money, if the majority of our conversations is about material things or it is gossip, talking about this person and that person then it means that the Hereafter is not our focus. If the Hereafter was our focus then it would be reflected in our conversation. This is a very basic level in which we can judge ourselves, so we should stop and ask ourselves, “what do we spend most of our time talking about”? If we find that our priority is this world, then we need to re-focus, we need to put “first things first”, meaning the Hereafter before the life of this world, and if we do this we can achieve inner peace, and Allah informed us of this in the Qur’aan, a precise step to take in order to attain inner peace, and Allah says: “Verily, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest.” (Ra’d 13:28) So it is only by the remembrance of Allah that hearts find rest. This is the inner peace. The remembrance of Allah is in everything we do as Muslims. Islam is living a life remembering Allah, and Allah says: “Perform the prayer for my remembrance…” (Ta-Ha 20:14) Everything that we do (in Islam) involves the remembrance of Allah as Muslims. Allah says: “Say: ‘Indeed, my prayer, my sacrifice, my living and dying are for Allah, Lord of all the worlds’.” (Al-An’am 6:162) So here is the way to achieve inner peace, to remember Allah (subhaanahu wa ta’aala) in all aspects of our lives. In summary, the search for inner peace involves recognizing the problems that we have in our lives, recognizing our obstacles, recognizing that inner peace will only come when we identify those obstacles and understand which of them we can change and that we focus on those obstacles we can change, the ones which are related to our self. If we change our self then Allah will change the world around us and give us the means to deal with the world around us. Even though the world is in turmoil Allah gives us inner peace with it. Whatever happens we know that it is Allah’s destiny and that it is Allah’s trials and we know that ultimately it is for our good. and has good in it. Allah created us in this world and the world as a means to attain Paradise and the trials of this world is our own spiritual growth. If we can accept all this, accepting Allah in our hearts then we can find inner peace. In brief, In Islam, peace is the general rule or norm and war is only an exception. This rare exception is always as a compulsion in response to the actions of others. War is not something that Muslims should initiate unilaterally. The basic aim of Islam is to transform people’s thinking and to bring about an intellectual revolution in their minds based on tawhid, or the oneness of God. Making peace between people is better than (nafl) charity, fasting, and prayer. Allah (swt) and His Prophet (pbuh) encourage peace-making, quarrelling should be avoided, even when people speak rudely to us, we should respond with peace. Making peace is the primary goal in times of conflict and as long as people do not fight us, we should treat them in a peaceful manner.
(The authors write regularly on Islamic topics exclusively for “Kashmir Horizon”. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”.)
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