Islam & Peace

 

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

 Islam aims to build a peaceful society at all cost. It is because higher human objectives cannot be achieved in the absence of peaceful circumstances. The spiritual as well as moral progress of the individual is possible only in peaceful atmosphere. Hence the atmosphere of peace is essential for the building of good society. Academic research too is possible only in peaceful circumstances. The task of the propagation of truth too can be performed only in peaceful atmosphere. That is why one of the teachings of Islam is ‘reconciliation is the best’ (4:128). In this regard Islam enjoins us to establish peace even at the cost of unilateral sacrifice and patience. An event of the first phase of Islamic history provides us with an example of this unilateralism. This is known as Sulh Hudaibiya (Hudaiybiya Treaty). This was in actual fact a no-war pact that was secured by accepting all the demands of the rival group. To bring about an atmosphere of peace within the society Islam has given a number of commandments. For instance, the Prophet of Islam observed ‘A believer is one from whom people feel secure as regards their lives and property (At-Tirmizi). Another hadith has this to say: By God, he is not a believer from whose nuisance his neighbor is not safe. (Al-Bukhari) Islam aims at making all individuals peace-loving to the ultimate extent. That is why we are enjoined to greet one another by saying ‘Assalam-o-Alaikum’ that is, peace be upon you. According to another saying of the Prophet, the best Islam is to greet everyone you come across, whether or not you are acquainted with the person. (Fathul-Bari 1/103). The frequent reiteration of this phrase ‘peace be upon you’ is in actual fact an external manifestation of the desire for peace within. Islam wishes to inculcate this feeling within every individual that he should become a true lover of peace, to the point that this feeling starts welling up in his heart, finding expression whenever he meets a person. Islam is a peace-loving religion from beginning to end. And it is but natural that it should be so, as all the best results it aims to achieve, can be achieved only when an atmosphere of peace is maintained at both national and international level. This path of peace is followed by the entire universe. It is known in science as the law of nature, which is imposed upon it by God. Whereas man has to adopt this path of peace of his own free will. This has been expressed in the Qur’an in these words: “Are they seeking a religion other than God’s, when every soul in heaven and earth has submitted to Him, willingly or by compulsion? To Him they shall all return” (3:83).When peace is the religion of the entire universe, it should, therefore, be the religion of man too, so that, in the words of Jesus Christ, the will of the Lord may be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:10) In a similar vein, the Qur’an tells us that: “The sun is not allowed to overtake the moon, nor does the night outpace the day. Each in its own orbit runs.” (36:40) When God created heaven and the earth, He so ordered things that each part might perform its function peacefully without clashing with any other part. For billions of years, therefore, the entire universe has been fulfilling its function in total harmony with His divine plan. Peace is no external commodity to be artificially imposed upon man. Peace is inherent in nature itself. The system of nature set up by God already rests on the basis of peace. If this system is not disrupted, it will continue to stay the course set for it by the Almighty. It is true that the only condition to maintain the human system on the path of peace is to keep it free from the elements of corruption. That is why the Qur’an states:
And do not corrupt the land after it has been set in order. (7:85)  In order to preserve the peace established by nature, from disruption, two important injunctions have been laid down by Islam. One at the individual level, stresses the exercise of patience, and the other, at the social level, forbids taking the offensive. Negative reaction on the part of the individual is the greatest factor responsible for disrupting peace in daily life. It repeatedly happens that in social life one experiences bitterness on account of others. On such occasions, if one reacts negatively, the matter would escalate to the point of a head-on collision. That is why Islam repeatedly enjoins us to tread the path of patience. The Qur’an says: Surely the patient will be paid their wages in full without measure. (39:10) The reason for the rewards for patience being so great is that patience is the key factor in maintaining the desired system of God. In the words of the Qur’an the patient man is the helper of God. (61:14) The other injunction, designed to maintain peace in human society is to forbid the waging of an offensive war. No one in Islam enjoys the right to wage war against another. There are no grounds on which this could be considered justifiable. (2:190) There is only one kind of war permitted in Islam and that is a defensive war. If a nation by deviating from the principles of nature wages war against another nation, then, a defensive war, with certain conditions, may be waged by the country under attack. To sum up, Islam is a religion of peace. The Arabic root of Islam is ‘silm’ which means peace. The Qur’an states: ‘…and Gods calls to the home of peace’ (10:25). It is thus God’s will that men and women should jointly establish a society of peace in His world.  Peace is basic to all religions. Let us all strive then to establish peace in the world, for that is the bedrock on which all human progress rests.

Source: http://www.alrisala.org/Articles/tolerance/islamnpeace.htm

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are begging you to stop the U.S. before it nukes Iran

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks during World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States of America under US President Harry S. Truman. On August 6, 1945, the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, followed on August 9, 1945 by the detonation of the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. They were the only instances of the use of nuclear weapons in warfare.

In estimating the number of deaths caused by the attacks, there are several factors that make it difficult to arrive at reliable figures: inadequacies in the records given the confusion of the times, the many victims who died months or years after the bombing as a result of radiation exposure, and the pressure to either exaggerate or minimize the numbers, depending upon political agenda. That said, it is estimated that as many as 140,000 had died in Hiroshima by the bomb and its associated effects,^[1][2][3] with the estimate for Nagasaki roughly 74,000.^[4] In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the deaths were those of civilians.

The role of the bombings in Japan’s surrender, as well as the effects and justification of them, has been subject to much debate. In the U.S., the prevailing view is that the bombings ended the war months sooner than would otherwise have been the case, saving many lives that would have been lost on both sides if the planned invasion of Japan had taken place.^[5] In Japan, the prevailing view is that the bombings were unjustified, and that knowingly inflicting harm of this magnitude on civilians was inherently immoral.^[6]

On August 15, 1945 Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, signing the Instrument of Surrender on September 2 which officially ended World War II. Furthermore, the experience of bombing led post-war Japan to adopt Three Non-Nuclear Principles, which forbids Japan from nuclear armament.

The above is the story from a political point of view.

Here is the story from another point of view:

The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the dropping of Little Boy.

The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rises 18 km (11 mi, 60,000 ft) into the air from the hypocenter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed about 250.000 people and became the most dreadful slaughter of civilians in modern history. However, for many years there was a curious gap in the photographic records. Although the names of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incised into our memories, there were few pictures to accompany them. Even today, the image in our minds is a mixture of devastated landscapes and shattered buildings. Shocking images of the ruins, but where were the victims?

 The American occupation forces imposed strict censorship on Japan, prohibiting anything “that might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility” and used it to prohibit all pictures of the bombed cities. The pictures remained classified ‘top secret’ for many years. Some of the images have been published later by different means, but it’s not usual to see them all together. This is the horror they didn’t want us to see, and that we must NEVER forget:

1. SignalsAll the watches found in the ground zero were stopped at 8:15 am, the time of the explosion.

Within a certain distance from the site of explosion, the heat was so intense that practically everything was vaporised. The shadows of the parapets were imprinted on the road surface of the Yorozuyo Bridge, 1/2 of a mile south-southwest of the hypocenter. Besides, in Hiroshima, all that was left of some humans, sitting on stone benches near the centre of explosion, was their outlines.The photograph bellow shows the stone steps of a Bank where a person was incinerated by the heat rays.
2. The massacre

On August 6, 1945, 8.15 am, the uranium atom bomb exploded 580 metres above the city of Hiroshima with a blinding flash, creating a giant fireball and sending surface temperatures to 4,000C. Fierce heat rays and radiation burst out in every direction, unleashing a high pressure shockwave, vaporising tens of thousands of people and animals, melting buildings and streetcars, reducing a 400-year-old city to dust.

Housewives and children were incinerated instantly or paralysed in their daily routines, their internal organs boiled and their bones charred into brittle charcoal.

Beneath the center of the explosion, temperatures were hot enough to melt concrete and steel. Within seconds, 75,000 people had been killed or fatally injured with 65% of the casualties nine years of age and younger.

Radiation deaths were still occurring in large numbers in the following days. “For no apparent reason their health began to fail. They lost appetite. Their hair fell out. Bluish spots appeared on their bodies. And then bleeding began from the ears, nose and mouth”.

Doctors “gave their patients Vitamin A injections. The results were horrible. The flesh started rotting from the hole caused by the injection of the needle. And in every case the victim died”.

This photograph shows an eyeball of an A-bomb victim who got an atomic bomb cataract. There is opacity near the center of the eyeball.

3. Hibakusha

Hibakusha is the term widely used in Japan referring to victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese word translates literally to “explosion-affected people”.

They and their children were (and still are) victims of severe discrimination due to lack of knowledge about the consequences of radiation sickness, which people believed to be hereditary or even contagious.

Many of them were fired from their jobs. Hibakusha women never got married, as many feared they would give birth to deformed children. Men suffered discrimination too. “Nobody wanted to marry someone who might die in a couple of years”.

Here is a couple of videos documenting the disaster:

Now, who do you think is the real threat to the world?

History documents who the real terrorist is and who the one that uses FEAR as his main policy is.

Did you hear of any country other than the United States that used the atomic bomb?

So, it`s ok for the United States and Israel to have the nuclear weapon and it`s “not” ok if any other country has that kind of weapon?

Don`t tell me that the United States is promoting peace because I am going to put my hands on my ears. I am not going to listen but I am going to watch because actions speak louder than words and what I`ve seen till now is an unquestionable proof that the United States is the real threat to this world following Mother Israel`s orders and controlled by Brothers Zionists and neoconservatives.

What a big obnoxious family!!!

How best to respond to British boycott of Israel?

 

Most of us heard about the recent British trend of boycotting Israeli Universities which is actually starting to include boycotting not just universities but other Israeli institutions as well. The Jewish community is extremely worried about this new trend. Boycotts themselves have a disturbing pedigree in Jewish memory for their devastating effect on Jewish communities, perhaps most famously in Germany in 1933. The Arab boycott of Israel, too, had a severe effect on the Jewish psyche and an economic cost.

So it`s all about the money not that anti-semitic crab.

This morning, I read an article at the “Global News Service of the Jewish People” web site and they were repeating their broken CD of anti-semitism and anti-Israel which the whole world now, even Jews, know how lame that excuse has become.

Here is the article:

By Ben Harris

Published: 06/06/2007

NEW YORK (JTA) — Jews around the world were united this week in denouncing a major British trade union’s decision to consider a boycott of Israeli universities, but they differed over how to respond to such threats.

Some want to fight fire with fire, while others were opting for an appeal function changefontSize(id,size,line) { document.getElementById(id).style.fontSize = size; document.getElementById(id).style.lineHeight = line; }

to the conscience.

On the more combative side are figures like Harvard University Professor Alan Dershowitz, who reportedly is advocating for legislation that would “devastate and bankrupt” British universities that refuse to do business with their Israeli counterparts.

On the other side are groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, which for now prefers to keep the controversy in the rhetorical realm by publishing a number of ads in major international newspapers branding the proposed boycott an act of anti-Semitism.

The differences emerged after the University and College Union, Britain’s largest teachers union, ignored the warnings of its secretary-general and voted May 30 to consider an academic boycott of Israeli universities.

Though most observers say the effort is likely to fail when put before the union’s full membership — four previous British attempts at an academic boycott of Israel have faltered — it nevertheless appears to have inspired other British bodies to consider similar measures.

Almost immediately after the UCU move, the country’s largest trade union decided to consider a boycott motion at its upcoming conference. While UCU represents 120,000 members, UNISON has more than a million.

“The UCU is just one link in the chain,” Ronnie Fraser, director of Academic Friends of Israel, told JTA. “The trade union movement is now the battleground.”

Both decisions follow a resolution in April by Britain’s National Union of Journalists condemning Israel’s “savage” attack last summer on Lebanon and calling for sanctions against the Jewish state.

With the boycott movement appearing to gain momentum, Jewish organizational officials are at odds over how to react.

Boycotts themselves have a disturbing pedigree in Jewish memory for their devastating effect on Jewish communities, perhaps most famously in Germany in 1933. The Arab boycott of Israel, too, had a severe effect on the Jewish psyche and an economic cost.

There is the oft-cited hope that cooler heads will prevail in the face of an initiative most Jews consider flagrantly discriminatory, if not abjectly anti-Semitic.

In Israel, the UCU decision was greeted harshly. Knesset member Otniel Schneller introduced a bill Monday that would slap British imports with a label reading, “This country is involved in an anti-Israel boycott.”

Israel’s airport union reportedly was considering refusing to unload British exports. And there were reports of canceling the Tel Aviv premiere of the British musical “Mamma Mia!”

Elizabeth Goldhirsh, a director of her family’s foundation supporting cancer research, said the board of directors of the Connecticut-based Goldhirsh Foundation decided not to open its grant process to British researchers, a move that had been under consideration. Instead, Goldhirsh said they would open their grants to Israeli researchers.

“I think there needs to be a message sent that there are consequences to singling out and demonizing Israel, and doing so above all other countries in the world,” Goldhirsh told JTA.

Others contemplated softer responses. The Jewish Funders Network, of which the Goldhirsh Foundation is a member, already has collected $200,000 to support exchanges with Israeli academics in the United States and Canada.

Peter Willner, executive vice president of the American Friends of Hebrew University, the American fund-raising arm of the Jerusalem institution, told JTA his organization opposes boycotts in principle and would confine its response to issuing a news release and raising awareness in the academic community.

“The only way to stop all of this is to have the right people stand up and say we’re not going to stand for this,” Willner said. “I think boycotts are an illegitimate tool, and especially when used against the State of Israel.”

Similar efforts to isolate Israel have taken root among trade unions in Canada, South Africa and Ireland. In the United States, sporadic efforts to have universities divest from Israel have been unsuccessful.

Only in Britain has the boycott effort been endorsed by unions of university teachers and journalists — both groups, critics are quick to point out, that profess fidelity to ideals of impartiality and dispassion.

“It really does puzzle me,” said Professor Malcolm Grant, president of University College London and head of the Russell Group, a coalition of Britain’s 20 largest research universities.

The coalition issued a statement calling the UCU vote “a contradiction in terms and in direct conflict with the mission of a university.” It echoed remarks by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told Parliament on Wednesday that a boycott is “misguided” and a threat to academic freedom.

“I don’t detect that it evidences any widespread sentiment in British society,” Grant told JTA. “These are curious eruptions for which I can offer no rational explanation.”

Others, however, are offering theories as to why Britain has become a hotbed of agitation by boycott supporters. Fraser attributes it to a perception of the Palestinians as Third World revolutionaries and to a historic tendency among British unions to fight for the underdog.

“Anti-Zionism appears to have taken on a sharper edge in Britain because of a historic and persistent hard-left movement, said Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Many of the rank-and-file members of the UCU routinely take their cue from them, he said.

The hard left, however, is active well beyond Britain, including on university campuses in the United States. For some, the difference lies in the response of the public as much as with the efforts of boycott supporters.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that unlike in France, which has commanded much attention for its reported rise in anti-Semitism, British leaders have failed to respond firmly to anti-Jewish sentiment.

As a result, Foxman said, British media and universities are far more hostile to Jews and Israel than in France.

“There’s been a lot more leadership in France against anti-Semitism in the last five years than there has been in Britain,” Foxman said. “France has begun to realize the problem. Great Britain has not.”

A person, Jewsih person, commented on the above article with the following:

“What is needed is a new formula for interaction.I’m surprised no one has brought such a formula forward.

Indeed, I tried to contact Foxman myself, but my ADL contacts — both in Los Angeles and Philadelphia — could not do anything.

A new plan is needed.

I wish someone could give me a contact that would listen to my proposals.

I am a credited, award-winning writer, screenwriter, journalist and Public Relations Specialist.

Someone help me so I can help solve the problem.”

Another Jewish person responded saying,

“What is your ’solution’? You posted nothing but a claim that you have a solution. Post your “new formula for interaction” if you really have one!”

The second Jewish person responding to the first comment forgot something very important. The person who claims having the right solution is not going to say it in public for two reasons. Firstly, like all Jews, he will only give that formula to anyone who “pays generously”. Secondly, that formula cannot be said in public because it will of course include some twisted Jewish methods some of them will be bribery, sex, and deceit and may be launching another malicious attack on an Israeli institution to create sympathy in British institutions to resupport Israel once again by ending that new boycott trend.

The article discussed in this post can be found at the following link:

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20070606britishboycott.html