ON our way home yesterday

World Peace: an essay for my daughter and her class.

On our way home yesterday, my eldest daughter Ira told me that she was asked to write an essay on the topic ‘World Peace” by her English teacher.  Ira complained that she had nothing much to say and all that she could think of was the genocidal grand holocaust (my terms) carried out by the Israelis in Gaza and Palestine in general.  Even there, she said that he did not know much about the war. 

She was rather taken aback when I said that world peace is not possible.  I think her teachers may have talked about world peace as something that is attainable. 

Human nature stands in the way of world peace.  Deep within us all is the seed of conflict: some call it the original sin, some call it nafs, some call it the demon within it comes in many names but it is not a source of despair or anxiety because it is necessary.  Without this “thing” how can we know what is evil.  If we do not have a drive to do something wrong, how will we know that we have won in our battles against evil and temptation?   After the war of Badr, The Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be unto Him) was once asked by his companions if there will be a bigger battle. To this he replied, the war against one’s own nafs.  Moreover, the simple fact that we all want different things can also lead to massive wars, even genocide and weapons of mass destruction both real and imagined.  One person want something but it already belongs to someone else and he does not want to part with it, consequently we have the motive for so many things ranging from a simple theft to inhuman murder of children and the innocent to a myriad of things that we humans have committed in the past and the present.  

Conflict has its roots in both the present and the past but it can only be lived in the present.  More importantly, if we fail to live in peace at the present, chances are peace will not be part of the legacy we leave behind for our future generations.

The question is not how we can reach world peace but how we can contribute to world peace because while we will never have world peace it remains a noble goal and one that is worth dying for.   Even if we do not reach world peace, achieving peace for ourselves and our children is good enough

So how do we begin? If you read the scriptures of religion and the treatises of great minds, you will find a simple idea that appears again and again bearing many names and taking many slightly different forms.   It appears in the scriptures of Abraham A.S., Jesus / Isa A. S., Muhammad S.A.W., Lao Tzu, Mahatma Ghandi and in the writings of other great minds and leaders of human civilization since its very beginning.  I shall call it, “Make yourself the center”.

You are the beginning of world peace process.  Let yourself be the end of the circle of hate.  To do this you need to rid yourself of all your hate and begin to be at peace with yourself.  Once you have the peace within you, you will then be able to make peace wit the world around you and with the people around you. 

Then teach another to do the same. Make sure that he or she does the same.  It is like dropping a drop of ink into a bowl of crystal clear water.   It will spread and eventually the whole bowl will have a slight tint of blue.  Unlike the bowl of water, our world may never take attain world peace because we have an innate tendency for conflict and war but we may be able to achieve a balance that we can all live with in relative peace. 

And so, how about ‘World Peace”?  Attainable or not, this is irrelevant.  In the end, we will be judged not by the peace that we live in but by our deeds in keeping that peace and making it a legacy to our young.  We are the beginnings of world peace but we cannot move towards any kind of peace at all if we do not find peace in our hearts, if we cannot find peace with ourselves, how can we find peace with those around us?

How do we begin? I believe we begin by praying for peace.  Then after your prayers are done, try sitting in silence and see how long you can stand being with yourself all alone.  Tell me, if you cannot stand being with yourself, what hope have you got of being in peace with anything or anyone else.  Where did this idea come from you may ask?  It is not mine; I learnt it long long from someone who introduced me to something called Sufism.