In his book The Ideology of Peace, Khan writes that history abounds preachers of peace. He says that in centuries no revolution in the true sense of the word has been brought about based on peace. For peace, the human need is not enough to make him exercise restraint and remain peaceable. He needs an ideology that convinces him at the conscious level of the necessity to keep the peace at all times.
Khan writes that in modern times, peace has become so vital to the survival of mankind that it has now literally become a matter of life and death for humanity. Peace means life: its absence means death. He aims to present peace in the form of a complete ideology that awakens human consciousness, which provides the answer to all life’s problems in terms of peace, which describes the utmost importance of peace, right from the individual to the international level. According to Khan, peace is a prerequisite for all kinds of human progress.
According to Khan, there are two principal reasons for this. When one focuses on an objective, one has to adopt one factor and discard another. This can be done with conviction only when one has a clear and specific theoretical justification for it. Without this, one cannot be wholehearted in accepting or rejecting any concept or practice. For instance, if the notion takes root in the minds of certain individuals that their rights have been usurped and that to redress their grievances, they must resort to violence, it will be impossible to dissuade them unless we can prove with forceful arguments that violence is not the solution to their problems, that such a course will only aggravate matters and will never restore to them their rights. To bring these individuals to the path of peace, they must be convinced by an ideology based on why, to achieve their objectives, they must essentially renounce violent methods and conduct their struggle along peaceful lines. Ideology gives us the logical basis for why one course of action should be rejected and another course of action should be adopted.
Attempting to evolve a complete ideology based on peace is indeed as important a goal as peace itself, and vice versa. Both are interdependent. The one cannot exist without the other. Khan argues that the only solution to this serious problem is for man to have a complete ideology of peace. The actual problem of today is that no ideology of peace in the real sense exists. Why is there this negative side to human psychology? It is directly related to the creation plan of the Creator. According to Khan, it acquires meaningfulness only in terms of God’s plan of creation.
Khan says that the study of psychology tells us that human beings are, by nature, egoists. Whenever their ego is hit, a hostile reaction is produced, which easily becomes hatred and the urge to do violence.
Khan says willingness to keep the peace—a matter of conscious decision-making—is a noble human quality. For peace, man has to curb his anger and be forgiving. He has to control his feelings of hatred and project feelings of love for others. If peace is to be maintained, negative thinking has to be suppressed and replaced with positive thinking. For peace to be a reality, one has to be a well-wisher rather than an ill-intentioned person.
