The Sensible Way to Respond to Provocation
There is one solution to conflict that every person is aware of. In fact, every person uses this very method when he feels that his personal interests are under threat. This solution involves conducting oneself in such a manner that helps winning over one’s opponents, rather than engaging in confrontation with them. Lamentably, however, when it comes to relations between communities, many people forget this method completely. They wrongly believe that there is no solution to their problems other than confrontation and conflict.
The basic reason for this contradiction is ‘cheap leadership’. A community that is degenerated lacks the power of action. It seeks to hide this fact under the veil of heated rhetoric. In such a community, the easiest way for someone to become powerful and ‘famous’ is through bombastic rhetoric. Our Muslim leaders stiffly compete with each other in this regard.
This sort of utterly superficial leadership always proves costly for a community. As someone has very aptly put it:
The cheaper the politician, the more he costs his country.
I would like to cite an instance here—of an internationally-renowned Islamic institution in India. The authorities of this institution once played a key role in Indian politics. The solution they devised to solve the problems of the Indian Muslims was to insist that Muslims must damage their opponents. They claimed that sometimes communities have to give proof of their capacity to damage others in order to teach them a lesson and said that this is what the Muslims of India, too, should do. Until Muslims demonstrated that they could cause damage to others, they argued, their right to lead a respectable life in this country would not be accepted.
In 1967, general elections were round the corner in the country. In accordance with this institution’s recipe of inflicting damage on others, it called for Muslims to support opposition parties in the upcoming elections and defeat the then ruling Congress Party. Vast numbers of Muslims were taken in by this appeal, and so this institution became for a short while (1966-67) the headquarters, as it were, of Muslim politics in India.
This, then, was the ‘solution’ that this Islamic institution presented for solving the problems of Muslims. But when, just a few years later, in 1974, this very same institution was faced with a serious internal crisis, it adopted a totally opposite approach! While it had claimed that inflicting damage on others was the solution to the Muslims’ social problems, when it was faced with a serious internal problem, it advocated something totally different! It called for winning over people’s hearts, as opposed to confrontation.
Just adjacent to this grand Islamic institution is a big university. Now, this physical closeness of the university was a continuing problem for the institution. The students who resided in the university hostel—who were almost all non-Muslims—routinely troubled the students of this Islamic institution. They would abuse and throw stones at them and make fun of them. They wanted to provoke these students into reacting, so that they could get an excuse to damage the institution.
This carried on for several years. Complaints were lodged with the governmental authorities, and the police were also contacted, but the problem remained unresolved. Thereafter, the authorities of this Islamic institution decided to make a wise move, which finally resolved the longstanding issue.
The authorities of the institution decided to contact the leaders of the students living in the university hostel. They invited them over for tea. When the student leaders arrived, the authorities of the institution spoke to them very gently. They even gave them gifts. And then, they made a proposal. They offered to conduct a hockey match between the students of the institution and the university. The leaders of the students agreed.
The authorities of the Islamic institution started making preparations for the hockey match. They got together some of their students and formed a hockey team. They told them, “You are not to play this match in order to win. Rather, you must play so that you lose!”
The intention was to deliberately allow the university team to win and make them heroes, and in this way get a chance to win their hearts.
The match was held on the appointed day. As per their plan, the team of students from the Islamic institution played very badly, thus allowing the university team to win. Then, as previously decided, the university team was feted about and lionized, and in different ways the members of the team were sought to be appeased. They were given handsome prizes and were treated like heroes.
The university students wanted to show off their claim of being superior, and the folks at the Islamic institution made every effort to satisfy this urge of theirs. And so, the problem that had beset the Islamic institution for several years was automatically resolved. From then on, the university students stopped troubling the students of the institution.
This is a remarkable instance of how to win over one’s opponents. But the question arises as to why some people who in personal matters choose to solve their disputes by trying to win their opponents’ hearts act in a completely contradictory manner when it comes to their community at large—by urging frenzied emotional outburst and confrontation against other communities.
The reason for this is that such people view disputes that involve their personal interests from the point of view of finding a possible solution. In contrast, they see the problems of their community from the point of view of the possibility that these afford for asserting their claims to community leadership. If they were to adopt in community-related affairs the same approach that they adopt in their personal affairs, their cheap leadership and cheap popularity would suddenly vanish! Lamentably, no Muslim leader is courageous enough to consider doing anything of this sort. But the fact of the matter is that there is simply no other solution than this to the problems of the community, including that of inter-community violence.
We must adopt the same wise approach in matters relating to the problems of the community as we do in the case of disputes that involve our personal interests. If Muslims were to act in this way, inter-community violence would become a thing of the past.
I once met a man who lived in a place that had witnessed deadly communal riots, in which Muslims had suffered enormous loss in a span of just three days. He said to me, “I have been living in this city for the last 30 years. But never in all these years have we witnessed anything like what we witnessed in the last three days.” And then, as is the norm, he began cursing the community that he singled out as responsible for this violence.
I responded to the man saying, “You think a lot about the riots that continued for three days in your city. But please also ask yourself that if for the last 30 years there had been no riots there, what was the reason for this? Do you think you can draw lessons only from these three days and nothing at all from those 30 years?”
I further added, “This isn’t something linked to only a particular community. It actually relates to every person and to every community. The fact is that within each human being there is a devil, who is fast asleep. This devil is anger. As long as you allow this devil of anger inside others to remain asleep, you can live in peace and security. But if you do something foolish and cause this devil to wake up, it will do everything that it can to harm you. It has nothing to do with any particular community. It applies to Muslims in exactly the same way as it does to others.”
“This, in brief, is the root of all communal riots,” I explained to the man. “Riots always emerge from anger and the desire for revenge. The fact is that God has not made a single person who in ordinary conditions is angry and vengeful. No one is perpetually angry, and nor is anyone always vengeful. Anger and vengefulness are results of temporary, not permanent, conditions. If some people were always angry and vengeful, even in normal or general conditions, there would be riots all the time, at every single moment! We would not have had a single day of peace and security, leave alone the 30 years of peace that your city enjoyed!”
Islam teaches us to avoid getting provoked by others. In this way, conflict can be prevented. This principle of avoidance is the most effective solution to every kind of conflict. But you can act according to this principle only if you surrender yourself to God’s Will. Otherwise, if you disobey His Will, you will carry on waking up other people’s sleeping egos, and this would inevitably lead to conflict and violence. And then, when riots break out, you will present yourself as ‘innocent’ and stupidly go about blaming and cursing others for your plight.
