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M.A. Elahi: We Can Choose Peace or Hatred
Written by Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi, Imam, Islamic House of Wisdom, Michigan, USA
Monday, January 2, 2006
God is beautiful and the source of all beauty. As beauty comes from God so do all the principles and sources of peace: love, compassion, justice, wisdom, knowledge and guidance. On the other hand, Satan is the source of ugliness and evil. Everything that causes war comes from Satan: sin, selfishness, greed for power and domination, arrogance, racism, and the sense of superiority over others.
Man is free to choose. He can answer God’s call for peace, love and compassion, or answer the devil’s call for hate and crime. Men can go lower than beasts or higher than the angels. It depends on the status of our internal jihad (internal struggle) whether we follow the forces of the divine or the forces of the devil.
Peace comes from God when we recognize it in our heart, say it with our tongue, and practice it in our life. In other words, only if you submit to His will can our planet enjoy peace. How to submit to the will of God? The Qur’an says peace be with Abraham, peace be with Moses and Mohammed, and with Jesus and the thousand of Ambassadors for Peace who were assigned by God to bring us this beautiful message. Our job is to do what Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and other ambassadors of God did. They showed us and taught us how to make peace.
Our Islamic faith is under fire. When Islam is under fire it is not good news for Christians or Jews or any other religious community, because we all follow the same message coming from the same God.
I know that Islam is, unfortunately, misrepresented by some who consider themselves spokesmen of Islam. But they are not and do not deserve to have this title. To attack the Islamic faith is not to promote peace. To spend millions of dollars on over a thousand Internet sites spreading hate materials against Islam and to have hundreds of fanatic organizations that attack Islam does not help the world.
I heard that one American university removed the Qur’an from the library because they said it was anti-Semitic. There is one verse in the Qur’an that said Jews are your enemies. This verse referred to a certain group at a certain time in a certain situation. However, the Qur’an contains even harsher messages against Muslims themselves.
The Qur’an chapter on Hypocrites [sura 64], for example, talked about Muslims who came to the Prophet Mohammed and said they recognized him as a messenger of God, but God witnessed that these Muslims lied and, therefore, were enemies. So should we Muslims go and remove the Qur’an from our libraries saying the Qur’an is anti-Islam because of this verse?
I hope and pray we will encourage our communities to interact, to communicate with understanding and love, and to recognize that we are all people of God and servants of God. We do not have to agree on everything, but we can still live with respect and tolerance. We must look to what helps all of humanity and that is peace, not war. We pray to be made worthy of the title Ambassadors for Peace.
[Source: Islamic Perspectives on Peace. Tarrytown, NY: Universal Peace Federation, 2008]