DOUSING THE FIRES OF VIOLENCE

The Quran tells us: Whenever they kindle the fire of war, God puts it out. (5:64)

From this Quranic verse, we learn something about God’s creation plan. We learn that this plan is based on the principle of peace. We learn that if someone is bent on kindling the fires of violence, we should try to put out the flames through peaceful measures so that the fire does not spread. It should never be that one party throws bombs and the other party retaliates in the same way. This is definitely not the proper way to respond. The right way to respond is that if someone plants a bomb, you must defuse it.

The above-quoted Quranic verse indicates that throwing a bomb in retaliation for a bomb thrown by someone else is not the way that God wants us to behave. God wants us to respond in situations like this by seeking to defuse bombs and render them ineffective at the very outset itself, so as to prevent the disruption of peace.

It is natural that one will inevitably face various unfavourable conditions in society. No human society has ever been free of these. The solution to this problem is not to try to eliminate these conditions. Rather, their real solution is that we must make sure that we do not add an additional, undesirable condition to the already existing ones. We must not add one more bomb to the existing number of bombs. In this way, we can help prevent unfavourable conditions from further worsening. And, in this way, we can solve them. This is the real and effective solution to the problem. There is no other possible solution.