اسوہء انسانِ کامل

اسوہء انسانِ کامل — Page 630

نبیوں میں سب سے بزرگ اور کامیاب نبی 630 اسوہ انسان کامل we have tended to think of Muhammad as a grim figure, a cruel warrior and a callous politician۔But he was a man of great kindness and sensibility۔۔۔۔Divine aid seemed the only possible explanation for Muhammad's extraordinary success۔۔۔۔Instead of devoting all their efforts to restructuring their own personal lives within the context of the 'pax Romana,' like the early Christians, Muhammad and his companions had undertaken the redemption of their society, without which there could be no moral or spiritual advance۔۔۔۔the Islamic empire had reached the limits of its expansion about a hundred years after Muhammad's death, and Muslims developed normal diplomatic and economic links with their neighbours in the House of War۔There was no pressure on Jews, Christians or Zoroastrians to convert to Islam,۔۔۔We in the West have never been able to cope with slam: our ideas of it have been crude and dismissive and today we seem to belie our own avowed commitment to tolerance and compassion by our contempt for the pain and inchoate distress in the Muslim world۔Islam is not going to disappear or wither away; it would have been better if it had remained healthy and strong۔We can only hope that it is not too late۔۔۔If Muslims need to understand our Western traditions and institutions more thoroughly today, we in the West need to divest ourselves of some of our old prejudice۔Perhaps one place to start is with the figure of Muhammad: a complex, passionate man who sometimes did things that it is difficult for us to accept, but who had genius of a profound order and founded a religion and a cultural tradition that was not based on the sword - despite the Western myth - and whose name 'Islam' signifies peace and reconciliation۔"(7)