THREE MINUTES
Syed Imtiazuddin Desnavi is an engineer. In 1967, he was stationed in a village called Lonavla in the Pune district as part of his service. One day, while he was praying Taraweeh with other Muslims in the mosque, loud noises were heard from the street. A Hindu procession was passing by the street adjacent to the mosque. When they reached in front of the mosque, they stopped and started playing loud music.
During Taraweeh, the prayer ends with Salam after every two rak’ahs. When the Imam finished two rak’ahs and said “Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullah,” the worshippers suddenly became upset. Some people started to stand up to tell the procession to be quiet and move along because they were disturbing the mosque. Syed Imtiazuddin suggested that they sit for a few minutes and engage in dhikr (remembrance of God), and the procession would continue on its own. As a result, all the worshippers sat quietly.
In a meeting on March 20, 1994, Syed Imtiazuddin said that just three minutes had passed when the noise started to fade, and shortly afterward, it stopped completely. The procession paused in front of the mosque for only three minutes before moving on by itself.
In contrast, if some Muslims had come out onto the street to stop the procession, the people involved might have become more stubborn. This would have increased tensions on both sides, ultimately turning the procession into a matter of pride for both groups. The situation would have kept escalating, eventually resulting in what is known as communal violence. On one side, the Taraweeh prayers in the mosque would have been disrupted, and on the other side, the village would have been thrown into chaos of fire and blood.
A similar contrasting incident occurred in 1980 in Moradabad. During Ramadan, a non-Muslim procession passed in front of the mosque and started playing loud music. The Muslims gathered in the mosque for prayer were unwilling to observe the “three minutes” of patience. They came out and tried to stop the procession. As a result, Moradabad experienced a horrific riot. This shows that there is only a three-minute window between peace and conflict. If you can endure the situation for three minutes, peace can be maintained everywhere, but if you can’t, conflict will erupt everywhere.
