Presenting the Ideology
of Peace
On this journey, I met a person from Kuwait. His name was Ali Hasan. During our conversation, he said that the Islam that Arab people have now-a-days is extraordinary. For instance, if you ask an Arab how the weather is, he will first say Bismillah hir Rahman nir Rahim (In the name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful), Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God), and Subhanallah (Glory be to God), and only after that, he will reply. However, these are only catchphrases (takyakalaam) of theirs. It is not the expression of any Islamic spirit.
I said that the Islam that prevails among Muslims today is not in the form of a Divine way of life but, instead, it is a part of the culture, as with other peoples. Nowadays, religious activities appear to be happening among various religious groups, but these are cultural activities, not religious in the true sense.
On 14th October evening, a session was held with detailed discussions. An Indian companion of mine later told me that I had spoken for 1½ hour continuously in English and that he listened to me in amazement. He thought it strange and a great blessing of God that I, being a maulvi (Muslim scholar), spoke with such clarity in front of an English-knowing audience about Islam and Muslims.
In my talk, I touched on different issues. First, I clarified that the military action that some Western countries were engaged in against terrorism would not cause terrorism to cease. Modern terrorism is not an issue of gun vs gun. Instead, it is an issue of gun vs ideology. Terrorism cannot be ended simply through violence; the fact is that those who have taken to terrorism have developed an ideology that seeks sanction for their terrorism, that is, justified terrorism, and in which they have firm faith, so much so that they even consider suicide-bombing to be martyrdom. They believe that if they are killed fighting, they will go straight to Paradise. Even if all the atomic weapons were eliminated, it would not cause terrorism to end. This is because terrorism is in mind. I explained that along with the present nuclear disarmament program, there was a need to launch an ideological campaign to replace militant thinking with peaceful thinking. We need to re-engineer the minds of militants on peaceful lines by replacing the ideology of violence with the ideology of peace.
This session was probably the most important one during this entire trip. Present on occasion was an eminent person who lives in Los Angeles. I was told that he had a direct connection with the U.S. Administration in Washington, D.C. Taking advantage of his presence there, I said that, according to my estimate, the U.S. authorities had till now been unable to understand the depth of the problem of Palestine. That is why their efforts had not succeeded in solving the problem. I said that I believed that the American people are realistic. Hence, if the Truth is conveyed to them, they will reflect on it.
I expressed that Peace cannot be established simply through military power in West Asia. To solve the issue, America should change its policy in West Asia. Till now, it had been pursuing a one-sided, pro-Israel policy. However, now it should change this and adopt a wise policy, what could be called a ‘win-win formula’—a formula through which all parties would win. For instance, in Jerusalem, the principle of one city and two administrations could be agreed to. In line with this principle, the eastern part of the city could be given to the Arabs, and the western part could remain under Israeli control.
Some 400 people had gathered from different parts of the world. Some English books of ours were presented to most of them. In addition, the conference organisers arranged for my pamphlet, Manifesto of Peace, in which I had given the proposal in 2001, to be distributed among the participants. They had also issued a beautifully bound book (of more than 250 pages), in which three speeches of mine had been included.
