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Published on 27th January, 2003
Cutting the Roots
of War: Part Two
Part One
By Grand Ayatullah Agha Muhammad Shirazi
Provided by Sheikh Muslim Banjhi
The
following is an extract from Chapter 4 of Imam Shirazi's book
"The New Order for a World of Faith, Freedom, Prosperity,
and Peace"
War is the worst
thing known to mankind throughout his long history. It brings
about the killing and maiming of human beings, the loss of their
powers and their disfigurement. It also causes the destruction
of civilisation and stirs up hatreds and resentments amongst
people and passes psychological problems on to future
generations. It also causes the fighters to become prisoners of
war. For these reasons, war must be avoided at all costs and if
war becomes necessary – because the enemy has forced the
situation – it is imperative that war should be limited to the
least degree of necessity. It is also imperative that humanity
in general put an end to wars finally so that they do not occur
in the future.
We find that the
Prophet Muhammad (s) did not instigate a single war, but rather
made war only in self-defence. Even then he did not resort to
defensive wars until after the exhaustion of a number of
alternatives:
Firstly neutrality,
as this was the case between the Prophet and Abyssinia.
Neutrality is the first phase of non-aggression. After
neutrality comes the turn of the treaty of non-aggression as
practised by the Prophet when he entered into a treaty with the
Jews of Madinah or when he entered into a treaty with the
non-believers of Makkah at Hudaibia.
When all these
aforementioned ways and means have been exhausted, then comes
the turn of the defensive war. All the wars of the Prophet (s)
were of this nature. For example, the first clash of the Muslims
with the Qureish occurred when the raiding party of ‘Abdullah
ibn Jahsh came up against the caravans of the Qureish which were
coming from al-Sham (Syria) led by Abu Sufyan. This was a retort
to the aggression of the Polytheists against the Prophet (s) and
his companions, which had gone on for ten years. They had killed
some of them, banished some to Abyssinia and some to Madinah,
and tortured another group of them and destroyed the honour of
others as in the account of Sumayyaha the mother of ‘Ammar.
They confiscated their houses and their wealth in Makkah. And if
this was not enough, they approached the other Arabian tribes,
which surrounded Madinah and bribed them not to let the
Prophet’s caravans pass through their lands. This threatened
the Muslims with death by starvation. The defensive economic
blockade is one legal method used in wars, and what the Muslims
wanted from this raiding party and what followed it (like the
battle of Badr) was to place an economic blockade on the people
of Makkah who were at war with the Prophet in the same way that
they had placed a blockade upon him.
As for the rest of
the Prophet’s raids, wars and assaults, they resulted from
either a breaking of the treaty by the other side as did the
Jews of the clan of Qainaqa’ in Madinah, and the Polytheists
of the Qureish in breaking the peace treaty of Hudaibia, or they
were to repel the enemy as in the battles of Uhud and al-Khandaq.
Otherwise they were
for defensive purposes as in the story of Mu’ta when the
Persians and the Romans had engaged in aggression towards the
Islamic state and Islam was surrounded by enemies who only
sought the worst for Islam. They began to try to attack Islam
and tear it out by the roots and kill the Prophet (s) and
exterminate the Muslims. They indeed began to do this. Hercules,
the leader of the Romans killed a group of his subjects who had
become Muslims in Syria. All of this gave the Prophet (s) the
religious, common law, and legal right to defence. Likewise with
the Persians, Khosrau their leader ordered his governor in Yemen
to send some of his henchmen to bring him the blessed head of
the Prophet. However the messengers who came to Madinah refused
when they saw the Muslims thronging around the Prophet who
reasoned with them in a story much mentioned in the chronicles.
The Prophet (s) used
to strive to keep the amount of killing and prisoners in his
wars to a bare minimum in a way that the world has not witnessed
either prior to or after the advent of Islam. For example, one
writer mentions that the number of people killed on both sides
(Muslims and Polytheists) in all the battles in which the
Prophet fought did not exceed much more than one thousand and
this in more than eighty wars. Another mentions that the number
killed in all the wars was 1018 people. A third mentions that
the number of Infidels and Muslims killed in all the wars was no
more than 1400 this being the largest number mentioned in this
regard.
Dr. Muhammad
Hamidullah in his book ‘Muhammad’ mentions that the
Prophet Muhammad (s), although he gained control of more than
one million square miles of territory which is equal to all of
Europe excluding Russia, and although millions of people lived
in this area, only one-hundred and fifty Muslims were killed in
all of his wars. He adds that this number amounts to
approximately one death per month. This is only due to the
respect that Islam has for blood and its avoidance of killing
wherever possible.
In contrast to the
government of the Prophet (s) we find that most other
governments went to excesses in blood spilling. Historians say
that the Assyrians were cruel and heartless. They would destroy
cities, which they conquered after besieging them, and would go
to great lengths in killing, torture, and mutilations. They
would reward the army for every severed head brought from the
battlefield. They would set about killing all the prisoners of
war on the battlefield when they were great in number so that
they would not consume food and drink, or be a danger to the
rear of the army. The kings and leaders would lead the carnage
and would begin it by putting out the eyes and cutting the
throats of prisoners. The leaders and nobles amongst the
prisoners would be tortured before being killed. Their ears and
noses would be amputated, their tongues cut out and their hands
and feet severed or they would be skinned alive or roasted over
fire or thrown from high towers. The king who ascended the
thrown of Assyria in the year 745 B.C. used to crucify prisoners
on posts while archers would kill them with arrows. In certain
wars he would use prisoners to pull carriages laden with wood
instead of beasts of burden.
In the book ‘Prisoners
of War’ in the story of the Moguls the writer says:
“The Moguls were
known for cruelty, brutality and bloodshed. Genghis Khan the
founder of their empire was famous for violence and killing and
his love of destruction and annihilation. Amongst their wars
they became embroiled with the Kharazm Shah ‘Ala al-Din. The
Moguls burned the city of Bukhara and plundered its wealth and
raped the women. The prisoners were marched to the city of
Samarqand. When they could not keep up with the horsemen Genghis
Khan ordered that anyone who lagged behind be killed and Bukhara
was razed to the ground. Samarqand met with the same fate when
the city was plundered and the inhabitants killed and thirty
thousand skilled craftsmen were taken prisoner. Genghis Khan
sent them to his sons in the north. A great number were forcibly
enlisted into the army and used for military operations and
transport.
In Khorasan, the
Moguls gathered the citizens in a wide space and ordered them to
manacle one another. They then began to slaughter them and
killed seventy thousand. When they occupied Merv, they
distributed its occupants amongst the Mongol warriors each of
whom got a share. They only spared 400 people who fulfilled the
needs of the army and some individuals were taken as slaves. The
rest of the cities met with the same fate. When the Moguls heard
that some citizens were sleeping amongst the corpses of those
killed the order was given that every head should be severed
from its body, an order that they carried out in all future
battles. They would pursue those who fled like hunters pursuing
their prey. They would use all kinds of devices to bring people
out from their hiding places. For example they forced a muezzin
from amongst the prisoners to give the call to prayer so the
Muslims came out from concealment believing that the raiders had
left but they were ambushed and wiped out. Before they left the
cities they would burn produce and crops so that those who were
hiding or had fled would die of hunger.
The policy of Genghis
Khan in his wars was to slaughter all of the soldiers in the
garrisons and the inhabitants of the cities and to plunder and
pillage and drown the prisoners. If a city resisted the Moguls
they would do even worse to it. The city of Nisapur resisted for
a few days and its reward was the wholesale slaughter of men,
women , and children. The Moguls did in Russia what they did in
the state of Kharazm, destroying and burning. They took a number
of Russian leaders prisoners through deception and betrayal and
put them in chains. Then carpets were put over them and the
Mongol leaders sat upon them to eat the victory banquet while
the Russian leaders were dying of suffocation.
The Moguls then
returned to Mongolia and destroyed the city of Bulghar, and
pillaged all the cities of Bazan and razed their buildings to
the ground and burned Moscow and besieged Tlotir. When the
noblemen cut their hair and hid in churches and wore the robes
of monks, the Moguls ordered that the church and the city be
burnt and all perished. Hulagu continued the advance in western
Asia until he reached Tabriz and turned towards Baghdad the seat
of the ‘Abbasid leadership. They laid siege to Baghdad for
forty days and set up mangonels around all the castles and
fortresses. Then they pelted them with rocks and flaming torches
making a large breach in the walls and setting fire to houses.
When the Caliph saw
that there was no way out except through peace he requested
peace and showed his readiness to surrender on condition that
his life and the lives of the citizens be spared. He went out to
meet Hulagu with three thousand judges, aides and nobles. But
Hulagu betrayed the agreement and double-crossed them and
destroyed the city. He ordered that the city be pillaged and the
population slaughtered. The bodies of those pleading for help
fell under the hooves of the horses and the women were raped.
The blood flowed in the streets for three days until the waters
of the Tigris were red for a number of miles. The city became a
free for all for six weeks. They slaughtered the population,
violated sacred sites, burned houses, palaces were levelled, and
mosques and tombs were ruined by fire or pickaxes. The patients
in the hospitals were slaughtered, students and professors were
killed in the schools. The shrines of saints and Imams were
desecrated and the corpses burnt. The bloodbath went on for a
number of days until Baghdad became a wasteland of rubble. More
than a million and a half citizens had perished. The Moguls then
crossed the Euphrates heading towards the Arabian Peninsula in
pursuit of the populace. They killed and pillaged and destroyed
all the population of al-Raha, Jaran, and Nasibayn and butchered
in Aleppo fifty thousand and abused ten thousand women and
children.
They did the same
thing in all the lands of Islam. For example when Tamburlaine
heard of the killing of a number of his men and soldiers in
Isfahan he became angry and ordered his army to invade the city
and that each soldier was to return with the head of one of the
citizens who had been killed which the army duly did. The city
became a human bloodbath. By the evening seventy thousand of the
victims skulls had piled up so Tamburlaine ordered that towers
be built from them in the streets. The same thing happened in
other cities they reached, slaughtering the populace and setting
fire to the cities.”
We find the situation
in modern wars to be the same if not worse than that. America
with the atomic bomb killed a quarter of a million people in
Japan in the space of hours and burnt everything.
When the British came
to Iraq, they treated the people in the worst possible ways.
They would kill the wounded and be merciless towards the
prisoners and would extract corpses from the graves desiring the
shirts and clothes. In the Sudan, the British soldiers would cut
off the heads of those killed and send them to London to be made
into ashtrays out of hatred for the Muslims.
In Libya, the
Italians killed half the populace, which in those days reached a
million. They killed half a million in the most horrible ways.
They would use corpses as an example to the rest and would
torture the living foully.
Likewise the French
in Algeria where they killed a million out of nine million
people. Some statistics say that the killed two millions. They
would use corpses as an example and would torture the living
cruelly in a way that has few equals.
In the war between
India and East Pakistan (Bangladesh) more than three millions
were killed through hunger, torture or plague.
The Russians killed
five million Muslims in various ways like burning, drowning,
torturing to death and shooting in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and
the other Islamic lands which they took control of. They also
killed more than one million in Afghanistan and filled their
prisons with innocent people and tortured the people in the most
disgusting ways.
The Americans in
Vietnam and elsewhere have killed a vast number of people
counted in millions. They also used to torture people and
destroy crops.
The world witnesses
in the modern age the worst forms of killing, torture, and
burning and the degradation of the nobility of the human being.
The events of the first and second world wars are well known and
to be found documented in books.
The weapons of mass
destruction that science has discovered and the use of these
weapons in wars bring about the devastation of civilisation
whether that be in limited wars or world wars, for even limited
wars cause destruction on their own scale. For example, in the
Lebanese war 150,000 people were killed or injured. In the
Iran-Iraq war the number of dead and injured has been estimated
at more than one and a half million and the losses due to the
war at 500 million dollars.
If, God forbid, a
world war was to occur, then it is likely that civilisation
would end. A report has mentioned that it was the plan of
America to destroy in a nuclear attack 85 per cent of Russia’s
manufacturing plants. Each of America and Russia have stockpiled
enough weapons of mass destruction to destroy humanity seven
times over. There are bombs, which if dropped on a city would
annihilate everything in an area of 250 square miles. There are
other fearsome weapons of mass destruction which when compared
with the weapons of the second world war are like the cannon and
tank in comparison with primitive weapons like the sword and the
spear.
War, in addition to
the death and destruction has other effects:
1. It leaves behind war wounded and disabled who will suffer
from their complaints for the rest of their lives. The weapons
of mass destruction cause many different diseases and
disfigurements in humanity, animals, and to the land itself.
There is a report that Russia bought 25 million prosthetic limbs
and organs like hands, legs, and eyes for the maimed after the
end of the Second World War. This in addition to the fact that
atomic warfare irradiates houses and causes plants not to grow
in the earth for long periods of time.
2. War eats into the economy on a great scale. States change
their apparatus during time of war to the apparatus of war which
gobbles up money and brings about poverty for many years. Gustav
Le Bon has mentioned that Spain has not yet recovered from the
Crusades against the Muslims and this after nearly 1000 years.
Another historian has said that Iraq has not recovered from its
destruction at the hands of the Moguls seven centuries ago.
America spent 7.4% of its GNP on the cold war in the year 1953.
If this were the case for the cold war what would be the case
for the hot war? In addition to the warring nations, war eats
into the economy of all the other nations, for these days the
economy is not confined to one place on earth but the economy of
all nations has become interconnected and goods are imported and
exported to and from all states. Even the nations that are
nominally neutral but are not really neutral are affected
economically by war. All can remember how the world fell into
dire straits during the second world war in both the nations at
war and those not at war.
3. War also causes a decline in civilisation for the warring
nations and those connected to them and indeed all the nations
of the world. For when every nation becomes at war then cultural
services, manufacturing, agriculture, and education cease on a
large scale which causes the stagnation of the culture and
indeed its decline. A great number of different types of
scholars who are the axis of the progress of the civilisation
can become taken up by the war. Certain newspapers have
mentioned that Egypt lost ten thousand engineers, experts and
doctors when the Israeli Bar-Levi line was destroyed.
Peace ... Peace ...
Peace!
In a previous book
of ours “Jurisprudence of Sociology” regarding the dangers
of war we have written: ‘It is imperative that the nations
strive in all earnestness to bring about a comprehensive peace
in our time, for the dangers of war have increased in a way
unimaginable.
Allah Almighty says:
"O
ye who have faith, enter into peace all of you, and do not
follow the footsteps of Satan."
(2:208)
"And if they incline to peace then incline to peace and put
your trust in Allah."
(8:61)
"There
was in them indeed an excellent example for you to follow of one
who seeks Allah and the last day. But if any turn away, then
know that Allah is Free of all wants, Worthy of all praise. It
may be that Allah will establish friendship between you and
those whom ye hold as your enemies. Allah has power, and Allah
is Oft Forgiving, Most Merciful. Allah does not forbid you from
dealing kindly and justly with those who do not fight you for
your religion or drive you from your homes. Allah loveth those
who are just. Allah only forbids you from taking as allies those
who fight you for your religion and turn you out from your homes
and aid others in turning you out from your homes. Whoever takes
them as allies, they are the wrongdoers."
(60:6-9)
Forwarded By Shaikh
Muslim Bhanji
P.O. Box
2736, Dodoma - Tanzania.
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![The late Grand Ayatullah Agha Muhammad Shirazi [r.a.]](images/GrandAyatollahAghaMuhammadShirazi.jpg)
