- If intercontinental terrorism was left to grow stronger, the inevitable consequence would be that the entire humanity will revert to a probably unprecedented state of savageness and chaos.
- In modern warfare, the scope of the armed conflict is directed inwardly to target the people of the same nation after inciting sectarian and racial strife.
- Promoters of wars have cunningly employed religions as fuel for these wars and destruction.
- Toppling despotic regimes does not require that safe people be bombed by airstrikes, nor have their houses torn down over them.
- The Islamic civilization served as a melting pot where the followers of the different divine religions lived together in peace and, under no circumstances, were discriminated against on basis of religion.
- I tried to investigate the case of all continents to find out where to hear the shots of cannons or see the seas of blood; I found these catastrophes only happening in the Islamic and Arab world.
- The United Nations -as it has been established to preserve international peace and security- can contain the problems of the Middle East.
- Islam -or religions in general- cannot be the cause behind this catastrophe that went uncontrollable.
- We have to search for reasons of lacking peace in the attitudes of the great modern civilizations that find no harm in creating a fake enemy in order to make wars and busy such areas with struggles away from their lands.
In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
Reverend Prof. Ursula Nelles - Rector of the University of Münster;
Dear Faculty Members and University Students,
May Allah bestow His Peace, Mercy and Blessings upon you!
I would like to extend my greetings to all of you, and express my profound gratitude for Prof. Nelles for inviting me to participate in this scholarly forum where we can have a discussion about an issue that is so crucial that it threatens our contemporary time, challenges its entire civilizational achievements and almost casts them with the wind. The issue is regional and international peace, and the protection of human civilization from several hazards that lie in wait for them, on top of which is the intercontinental terrorism, which, if left to grow stronger, the inevitable consequence would be that the entire humanity will revert to a probably unprecedented state of savageness and chaos.
Dear scholars and thinkers let me share my vision on this issue in an uncommon way. Such a vision have been formed in my intellect due to my preoccupation with the issue of searching for "peace" which has gone lost, particularly in the recent years as our Arab East has become a scene for daily blood shedding, death and devastation.
Ladies and gentlemen, the person speaking to you now represents an entire generation that has not witnessed a period of time that is absolutely free from crises and wars. When I was a three-year-old boy, I lived the experience of the Tripartite Aggression on Egypt in 1956.
My peers and I went through many horrors that were so abject that I, some seventy-year-old man, do not want to recall now. A few years later, the Six-Day War took us by storm. We then experienced a suffocating, despair-inspiring five-year period. Sinai had entirely been lost in a blink of an eye and danger became imminent. The economy was war-afflicted and hardly fulfilled our basic needs. The tearing down of a building over all the students who were there will always be an unforgettable memory to me.
A few years later, another war, 6 October War, 1973, came with a different taste that time, which made us know how it feels when you emerge victorious and regain your dignity. No sooner had we thought that the Arab East had already entered a new era of stability, total development and catching up with the march towards progress, peace and prosperity, than we were made to experience a war of a different type and strategies where the scope of the armed conflict is directed inwardly to target the people of the same nation after inciting sectarian and racial strife, and providing the clashing parties with arms; thus allowing fierce wars that caused total devastation to happen.
Logic would fail to find one reasonable justification for the destruction that most of the region's states were made to suffer. Toppling despotic regimes does not require that safe people be bombed by airstrikes, nor have their houses torn down over them. The different religious and ethnic factions had long co-existed in peace in this region. The Islamic civilization served as a melting pot where the followers of the different divine religions lived together in peace and, under no circumstances, were discriminated against on basis of religion. They rather enriched and further enhanced social integrity and coherence.
It is quite puzzling to see the outbreak of these wars at the same time, in one region and between sons of one and the same nation, away from all other nations of the world.
Once I looked at a world map and tried to investigate the case of all continents to find out where to hear the shots of cannons or see the seas of blood or the lists of the refugees and the displaced who travel through deserts without food, water or a shelter from rains and snow; I found these catastrophes only happening in the Islamic and Arab world.
I wonder: are there any circumstances or changes that impose such wars and struggle that have stared and we cannot predict when to stop? Is revolution against a regime sufficient to ignite internal wars for many years in which blood shedding have never stopped for a day? Many such questions that hit my mind left unanswered. The only truth I kept in my mind all the way is that Islam -or religions in general- cannot be the cause behind this catastrophe that went uncontrollable, though the promoters of these wars have cunningly and skillfully employed religions as fuel for these wars.
Reverend academics, I do not want to go further in recalling these sad scenes of the Middle East, as you may be more aware of them than I am. However, I would like to say it is not proper to search in the teachings of religions for the reason of lacking peace. Rather, we should search for these reasons in the political circumstances and regional or global challenges and the desires of achieving international hegemony; we should search for motives of these wars in the economic schools that pay no attention to moral values, and the schools whose promoters and founders find no harm to achieve the benefit of a small group of humanity at the expense of the vast majority, and find no harm in accumulating wealth and riches, accelerating progress and welfare in the North, while increasing rate of poverty, disease and ignorance in the South. We have to search for the reasons of lacking peace in this imbalance at the sides of the Mediterranean. Moreover, we have to search for these reasons in the attitudes of the great modern civilizations that find no harm in creating a fake enemy in order to just make wars and busy such areas with struggles away from their lands in order to enjoy -alone- unity and internal social safety against their enemies. Such international complications -as I have referred to some of their negative manifestations- are responsible for much or less of the struggle of the Islamic and Arab worlds. The United Nations -as it has been established to preserve international peace and security- can contain the problems of the Middle East, save widows and orphans, who have no purpose in this conflict.
Ladies and Gentlemen!
I wish you pardon my honesty that may have exceeded the usual limits of such speeches. But I found it an excuse that I am speaking to scholars and colleagues who will not accept to selectively state some hypotheses and neglect others. All what I have mentioned is the view of the majority of intellectuals, thinkers and analysts in the East as presented by mass media and social media as a proven fact.
As for constituents of peace in religions, I have nothing to add in this regard to what I have said again and again in all interfaith conferences that I attended many European, American and Asian capitals for 15 years. In order not to bother you about this, allow me to sum up my opinion in this regard by stating the stance of my religion which, I believe, is a moderate religion that shows mercy to all humanity.
First: Divine religions have been sent down only in order to guide man to the way of happiness both in this world and the hereafter. They teach humans the values of mercy, truth and goodness. Moreover, religions ultimately teach humans that Allah honored them, raised their status over all other creatures, established them as His successor on earth, and forbade shedding their blood, seizing their properties and desecrating their honor. If you ever heard or read that any Divine religion allows shedding blood and infringing rights, then be sure that this is misrepresentation of the essence of the religion;
Second: We, Muslims, do believe that Islam is not a religion dependent from the earlier divine religions such as Christianity, Judaism. The Glorious Qur’an, moreover, teaches us that the divine religion is one religion named as Islam which means surrender to the Will of God, worshipping Him and directing oneself only toward Him alone. As such, all what we call religions in our dialogue are no more than divine messages which constitute connecting links in the chain of the only one religion, i.e. Islam.
In this way, we find Islam agree with all previous messages in the fundamental principles of creed and morals. Furthermore, Islam is closely related to these messages because believing in previous Messengers and Prophets as well as their Holy Books is an integral part of our belief in Muhammad (peace be upon him) and in the Qur’an.
The Qur’an teaches us that the essence of the message of Muhammad is identical with what was communicated to Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus (peace be upon them all). And this accounts for the close and crystal clear relationship between Islam and all previous divine religions, and in particular Christianity.
Third: The Qur’an enumerates three interrelated facts with regard to Islam’s view of humanity as well as the nature of the course of action to be adopted by Muslims when dealing with non-Muslims: First fact is that it is out of Allah’s Will to create people different in religion, creed, color, language and gender. Moreover, such difference does not change or vanish; Second fact comes as a consequence of the first that which is: it is inevitable that the relationship between different tribes and nations be based on “Taʿāruf”, meaning: mutual cooperation. The Qur’an states this clearly in Chapter 49:13. There is a logical inseparability between these two facts since we cannot imagine that Allah creates people with different views on religion and then allows them to develop a relationship of conflict, fight or war due to the same reason, i.e. religion. As such, there would be a contradiction between the right to freedom of religion and confiscating the same right in the case of fighting which results in forcing all people to believe in one faith. One historical fact is that Muslims did not carry swords against the others because of their beliefs so long as the other groups did not turn in to enemies fighting against Muslims. In such a case, the grounds for fighting would be aggression, and not religion.
Third: fact that brings together the aforementioned two facts is the right to freedom of belief as safeguarded by Islam. Let me remind you of two Qur'anic verses you may know by heart: "The right course has become clear from the wrong" and "whoever wills - let him believe; and whoever wills - let him disbelieve". Besides, one hadith reads "Whoever hates Islam whether a Jew or Christian, must not be forced to change his religion".
Fourth: the Quran declares that Allah, the Almighty, send Muhammad (PBUH) only as mercy to the worlds. The word "worlds" has a wider meaning than the word "Muslims" as, in Islamic philosophy, the connotations of this word extend beyond "human beings" to cover the world of animals, plants and inanimate objects.
The Quran addressed Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) saying, "And We have not sent you, [O Muhammad], except as a mercy to the worlds" and Muhammad (PBUH) addressed the whole human beings saying, “Indeed, I am a gift of mercy granted by Allah the Almighty ".
There is no room here to discuss in detail the good behavior that the Prophet PBUH used to show toward these worlds. It would be enough to refer only to his teachings concerning the prohibition of killing the elder, weak, women, children, and blind. Moreover, he prohibited killing the animals except for the necessity of eating, devastating houses, and cutting plants.
It is amazing that Islam also orders us to have mercy for human beings, plants and inanimate objects at circumstances in which mercy is normally have no place, as in the state of war where some kinds of cruelty are limited to it. However, the "mercy given as a gift to us" extended over the whole world including the enemies.
This Prophet, who was merciful to animals, told us that, “a woman was cast into the Hellfire because of a cat which she had locked in and thus it could not eat, and she did not let it free so that it could devour the vermin of the earth". He also told us that Allah mad a man to enter Paradise for quenching the thirst of a dog in excessive heat.
Fifth: the Quran found it insufficient in promoting peace to direct the Muslims to depend on the instinct of mercy, letting them discover how to apply peace willingly or unwillingly, rather it frequently featured the word "peace" and its concept in the Quran very striking, till Islam and peace become different sides of the same coin, if it is appropriate to say that.
It is enough to mention quickly that the word "peace" together with its derivatives that occur 140 times in the Quran versus the word "war" that is mentioned together with its derivatives 6 times only. Therefore, it is no longer strange that Islam establishes "peace" as a principle when dealing with Muslims and non-Muslims. The philosophy of the Quran, thus, leaves no room for conflict and fighting with the peaceful non-Muslims.
Reverend Scholars
How can we then apply the concept of peace to this complicated reality? The answer -to conclude my speech- is that: we should make peace between leaders of different religions not to say among religious leaders of the same religion. This is a problematic issue that requires a painstaking dialogue that delves deeper into the common grounds between religions, especially these common grounds are numerous and so important. If men of religions do not establish peace with each other, there shall be no hope to get the fruits of their call for peace among people, as it is logically known that a person cannot give what he does not have.
Thanks for your attentive listening!
May Allah's Peace, blessings and mercy be upon you!
The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar
Ahmed al-Tayyeb