The Holy War — Page 220
220 can anybody be a petitioner of his own rights, nor is He in need—like one who would die if not given his right—of His servants that they should obey Him. In fact, the prayers and obedience of human beings are for their own benefit. As, for example, when a doctor prescribes some medicine for a patient, it is not so that the doctor may imbibe that medicine himself, or so that he may derive some pleasure from imbibing it, but rather it is for the well-being of the patient. Then after this, you objected to jihad in Islam, but it is a pity that you have not understood an iota of the philosophy of Islamic jihad and have raised vain objections by ignoring the arrangement of the verses. Let it be known that the wars in Islam were not like the way a tyrannical king subjugates a weak people and then kills them. The true picture of these battles is as follows. For a long period of time, the Holy Prophet of God Almighty and his followers continued to suffer all manner of pain at the hands of their opponents, in consequence of which many from among them were murdered and many were tortured to death in terrible ways, so much so that a plan was even hatched to murder our Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. The opponents attributed all these successes to the truth of their idols. Even after the Holy Prophet s as had migrated, he was not left alone, and those very enemies traversed a distance so long that it required them to camp eight times in between to personally wage war upon the Muslims. It was then that the believers were commanded to fight to prevent their attacks and to afford peace to those who were like unto prisoners in the hands of their enemies, and, furthermore, to prove false the idols upon whom they relied for support and to whom their earlier successes had been attributed. Just as Allah the Exalted states: