Make love, Not War

While going through the readings for this session and the last one, I was quite surprised to see the number of minute issues that can actually become the reasons for extreme wars. Let it be domestic level, interstate level or global level. Causes being conflicts of ideas, nationalism, ethnic conflicts, religious conflicts, ideological conflicts or conflict of interests, further defined by territorial disputes, control of governments, economic conflicts and the list will keep on going on and on.

What I was quite surprised to see was that how stupid the human mind have actually been that it founded out hundreds of reasons to justify its indecent and illegitimate act of war but not a single one to create peace and harmony in the international system. Why is it that whenever we talk about international system and neighboring states, the most common expression that we come across is selfish, mean and bias. Why is it that even after having so many resources, we are still fighting for more and more of it? Why are we even a part of such a system which only promotes greediness and personal benefits rather than collective benefits? I believe that the only reason for all these things is that the love of power has overshadowed the power of love.

For the life that we are spending right now, it won’t be wrong to say that this world is the track, this life is a race and we are all competitors. One of the greatest Muslim speakers alive right now, usually emphasize on the power of love. He often gives the analogy of stone, which eventually softens due to the continuous action of water. Similar to the concepts of many western scholars, he also emphasizes on the fact that at the end of the day, war is actually beneficial for no one. Why kill our own brothers only on the fact that according to us, they were not THAT Islamic as they should have been or why go in the west and kill innocent people, saying that they were the reason behind all the oppression's and tyrannies of the Muslims. Who are we to decide whether the other person is right or wrong, or will he enter paradise or not. Why don’t we understand that Islam does give us the option of eye for eye but what is more respectable in the eyes of Allah is to forgive.

Mahatma Gandhi once said that “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind”. In this hectic and selfish life, where we always want to be best, what we always underestimate is the fact that we might be hurting other people in our so called aim of becoming the best. For a minute just think, that even if we win, still what will be the benefit of such a victory where there will be no one to even clap for us. A life without friends, without family, without our loved ones will indeed be like a body without a soul. Make love, not war before its too late………......