Can Justice Be Achieved Without Peace?

If peace is established unilaterally for the sake of peace, numerous opportunities can be opened up, which, when availed of peacefully, can lead to justice. An individual or group can secure justice only when it recognises available opportunities and wisely avails them.

The Quran says, {Reconciliation is best.} [An-Nisa’ 4:128]

What is Reconciliation?

What is reconciliation? It is another name for the results of peace. Where there is reconciliation, there is peace. Where there is no reconciliation, there is no peace. In this sense, then, it can be said that in Islam, peace is the summum bonum or the greatest good.

Generally, people think that justice is fundamental. However, justice is merely a concept or notion. The real question is how this concept should be turned into a reality. There is only one way for this—and that is through peace. If peace is established, numerous opportunities can be opened up, leading to justice when availed of peacefully. An individual or group can secure justice only when it recognises available opportunities and wisely avails them.

Across the world today, there are people engaged in violent conflicts to secure justice. However, all of them have failed to get the justice they seek. There is only one reason for this—and that is because their methods are wrong. The method you use to get what you want is of utmost importance in this world. Even if your goal or purpose is good, you cannot achieve it if you adopt the wrong method. This is a universal rule, and no individual or group is an exception as far as this is concerned.

A group or community that seeks justice must first establish peace. Peace is so important that it must be established at any cost. It can never be established on a bilateral basis. Instead, it is always based on exercising unilateral patience. There is simply no other way to establish peace.

The scheme of nature is based on opportunities. Nature provides us with plenty of opportunities. An atmosphere of hate and violence closes off these opportunities. Hate and violence act as trapdoors. To avail of the many opportunities that nature provides us, we must first end hate and violence to seal these trapdoors. Moreover, when this happens, we are deluged with a flood of all sorts of opportunities that we can avail of to achieve our goals.

These opportunities can help us in both the secular and the religious spheres. They can enable us to engage in efforts to advance educationally and economically. We can also avail these opportunities for religious purposes—to invite people to God. Engaging in this da`wah work, we can become eligible for Divine reward.

The “Beautification” of Violence

Satan portrays wrong actions in seemingly beautiful words. By falling prey to Satan’s beautification, people take to violence. Shunning resultless action, one must seek God’s forgiveness and abandon the path of violence.

Violence is in every sense a destructive action. The whole of human history is a testimony that no individual or group has ever secured any positive success through violence. Whenever an individual or group has taken to violence, it has only met with destruction and not with any real benefit or progress.

However, despite this, why is it that some people routinely resort to violence? it is because of what is called ‘Satanic beautification’. The Quran (Al-Hijr 15:39) tells us that Satan has a particular method—of portraying a wrong action in seemingly beautiful words.

Satan gives strife the name of ‘reform’. In this way, he influences people’s minds. He entangles them in the false belief that whatever they are doing is not violence but, rather, a holy jihad. It is the path to martyrdom that will take them straight to Heaven, he tells them.

Falling prey in this way to Satanic beautification,  people take to violence. They engage in wrong actions, and Satan deludes them into believing that they are engaged in good works.

There is only one way to save oneself from this ‘Satanic beautification’—and that is, to judge one’s actions in terms of their results. One should realise that violent actions that lead to destruction and that destroy available opportunities are a result of Satan’s ‘beautification’. One must, therefore, implore God for His forgiveness and abandon this path.

Violence in itself is entirely undesirable. It can never bring about any reform. It only works to inflict more damage. It always emerges from hate and enmity. We must cleanse our minds of hate and enmity, and then Satan will not be able to exercise control over us.

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Taken from “The Concept of Jihad in Islam” by Sheikh Wahiduddin Khan