The Lesson of the Spring

On one of my trips to Kashmir, I went with a group of Kashmiris to a wide valley outside Srinagar. From the towering peaks rivulets were cascading down the valley. I noticed the way each stream flowed till it arrived at a boulder. It did not try to break the rock to be able to move ahead. Rather, when it encountered the rock, it simply swerved to the left or to the right, around the sides of the rock, and kept on with its journey uninterrupted.

I said to my Kashmiri brothers: “Look, these streams continue their journey without clashing with the boulders. If you want, on the contrary, to achieve your goal through confrontation, you will never succeed. This is a divine law and according to the Quran, “You will never find any change in the ways of God.” (35:43)

Then I said that the divine law in this world is based on the principle of non-confrontation. The law of God for this world is that any constructive goal is achieved by peaceful methods, and not by violent methods. I added that the course adopted by the Kashmiris after 1947 to achieve their goal was one of hatred and violence. Such a course in this world of God is totally unnatural. For any such course, nature’s prior verdict is that it will never meet with success.

Friday—A day of violence

Once a well-educated Hindu pointed out to a Kashmiri Muslim that in his study of the Quran, he had found in the chapter titled ‘Friday’ the following injunction:

When the prayer is ended, then disperse in the land and seek of God’s grace, and remember God much, that you may be successful. (62:10)

The Hindu then went on to observe that although the Quran enjoined Muslims after saying their prayers to go out and distribute God’s mercy to people, he saw that once they had left the mosque after prayers, they took to the streets and shouted slogans, voiced their hatred and hurled stones at others. In doing so they were going against their own religion. This observation could be applied not just to the Kashmiri Muslims but also to the Muslims of the whole world. Today, the Muslims in every country have turned Friday into a day of hatred and violence. Almost every leader is using the Friday gathering for political ends.

This is a very dangerous sign. This is making use of the religion of God for communal and political purposes. This is exactly what happened in the case of the Jews during their phase of degeneration. According to the Quran, this stand taken by the Jews incurred the wrath of God. If Muslims adopt a similar stand, they will not be able to save themselves from its bitter consequences. No exception is made for any community in this matter.

I wasted the whole of my Life

A well known Kashmiri scholar, who was also called the “Mufakkir” (thinker) of Kashmir, was one of the leaders of the continuing political militant movement launched in Kashmir two decades ago. On December 13, 1990, at the age of 87, he was shot dead in Kashmir by some Muslim youths.

In a meeting on November 28, 2011, a Kashmiri Muslim told me that some time before his death he had given my book, ‘Al-Islam’ to this leader. In a later meeting the leader admitted to him that he was in total agreement with the content of the book. He further said that after reading it, he realized that he had wasted his whole life. With intense regret, he said, “I wish I had found this book earlier.”

These words of the slain leader might be taken as the last word of a dying person. In the lifetime of the scholar, the Kashmiris had taken his advice in the political field. Now they should take his advice in the matter of launching a different kind of Islamic movement. That is, the people of Kashmir should abandon the way of violence and opt for treading the path of peace. They should abandon political activism and opt for engaging in peaceful dawah work. In the words of a Persian poet, it is as if the soul of the slain leader is saying to the Kashmiris:

Man na kardam, shuma hazar ba kunaid

(I could not refrain (from politics) you ought to refrain from it).

The Gate of Paradise

Once the Emperor Jahangir (d. 1627) visited Kashmir. On seeing the beautiful scenes of nature in the valley, he exclaimed:

Agar firdaus bar rue zamin ast
Hamin asto, hamin asto, hamin ast

(If there is Paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.)

This couplet is not applicable in the sense of Kashmir being an actual paradise. However, it is right in another sense, that is, that nature has provided a point of reference in the form of Kashmir, by which one can have an idea of what Paradise is like and work towards being held deserving of Paradise in the Afterlife.

The Quran tells us that whenever the people of Paradise are given fruit to eat, they will say, ‘This is what we were provided with before’, i.e. they had been given similar things in the world. (2:25)

The present world, in its creation, is an introduction to Paradise (47:6). The world of Paradise is a perfect world, and the present world, although like Paradise, is an imperfect world. This is true for the entire planet earth. However, there are some places on earth which are outstanding in their similarity to Paradise. These places remind us of Paradise more than others. One of these places is, without doubt, the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir is aptly called Jannat Nazeer (similar to Paradise)

When anyone whose consciousness of Paradise is alive sees the beautiful scenes of Kashmir he will exclaim: “O God, you have shown me a scene of temporary Paradise, now let me enter into eternal Paradise.” In this respect, Kashmir, without doubt, is a great point of reference. On seeing Kashmir, an aware person can say a prayer which is called in the hadith praying with Ism-e-Azam, that is, with the great name of God.

But for such a prayer, a favourable environment is necessary. In an environment of hatred and violence, such divine prayer will not pour out of one’s lips. Launching a violent movement based on hatred amounts to depriving the people of Kashmir of this great blessing.

In an environment of hatred and violence, only curses and bad language will fall from one’s lips, and certainly not divine words. In such an environment people’s minds will become a jungle of negative thoughts, whereas for noble spiritual prayer to be said, it is essential for a man’s mind to be full of positive thoughts.

According to the Quran, Paradise is an abode of peace in the full sense of the word (10:25). Paradise -- a garden of peace culture – has no room for lovers of violence. Violence by its very nature is an inferno. Those who lead their lives in this world with a violent mentality incur the great risk of being thrown into the pit of fire in the next world.

According to the Quran, the inhabitants of Paradise will be peace-loving in the full sense (36:58). There, everyone’s hearts will be imbued solely with feelings of peace and love. This being so, only those will be selected to inhabit Paradise who have proved to have a peace-loving character. The present world is a selection ground. In this world, those people are selected who are peace-loving in the full sense and who deserve to be lodged in the peaceful society of paradise. This is the greatest reality which the people of Kashmir and others are invited to ponder upon.

The Culture of Gratefulness

What is violence? Violence stems from a culture of ungratefulness. Complaints produce violence and violence puts an end to feelings of gratitude in man. At the beginning of life, Satan threw down a challenge to God, saying: “I will surely come upon them from before them and from behind them and from their right and from their left, and then You will find most of them ungrateful.” (7:17)

If you look at it from this angle, you will find that violence is not as simple as people imagine it to be. A society vitiated by the culture of violence is quite evidently under the influence of Satan. It is Satan who had first led them into complaining and subsequently into violence. Violence is a Satanic culture: violence opens the door to hell.

We learn from the Quran that when God created man, He commanded Iblis to prostrate himself before man, but he refused to do so. Iblis, the leader of jinns, enjoyed many blessings of God, but on being denied one thing, (i.e. supremacy over man) he deviated from the path of gratefulness. This is ingratitude, and becoming ungrateful is, without doubt, following the way of Iblis.

Whenever an individual or a group deviates from the path of gratefulness, and opts for the path of hatred and violence, the cause is always traceable to some complaint or grudge. Notwithstanding the fact that he enjoys 99 good things, just the deprivation of that hundredth thing is made such a great issue of that it dominates his mind. Despite the plethora of causes for gratefulness, he turns himself into a jungle of complaint. This way is without doubt the way of Satan, even if it is couched in beautiful language.

In many such places as Kashmir, where Muslims have futilely adopted the path of confrontation, because of some political grudge, there are examples of Muslims who have not been deprived of everything but only of a few things and on this account they have become unnecessarily sensitive. It is this excessive sensitivity which is their real problem. If they could get over the feeling, they would feel all of a sudden that they had already been granted so many blessings that they would do better to launch a movement of gratefulness rather than ungratefulness and complaint.

Beautification of Violence

Violence is a destructive activity, in its full sense. The whole of history tells us that no individual or group has ever achieved any positive success through violence. Whenever an individual or a group has opted for the way of violence, it has been requited only with destruction and there has been no constructive outcome whatsoever.

Then, why is it that people repeatedly resort to violence? The reason is the beautification of Satan. We learn from the Quran that the way of Satan is to present a wrong act in beautiful words, thereby representing the work of evil as a kind of reform: “I shall make the path of error seem alluring to them on the earth and shall mislead them all.” (15:39)

In this way Satan influences people’s minds, giving them a false sense of conviction that their activities are not acts of violence, but rather acts of pious jihad; that it is the way of martyrdom which will lead them straight to heaven.

In this way by falling under the influence of satanic beautification, they engage in violent activities. They are in error but Satan tells them that they are working in the right direction.

There is only one way to save oneself from satanic beautification, and that is, to judge one’s actions by their results. The destruction which ensues from violent acts and the closing of all doors to opportunities should be enough to convince us that such acts are the result of satanic beautification. As such, those who engage in such activities should offer their sincere repentance to God, and sedulously abstain from all such wrongdoing.