Moral Excellence: “A Non-Violent Path to Indo-Pak Peace"
By Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam
(Co-author (Jointly with Ashfaque Ullah Syed), Essential Message of Islam, Amana Publications, USA, 2009)
26 April 2025
A Plea for Ethical Revival to Prevent War in the Indo-Pak Subcontinent
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While framed as an independent article, its timing - in the heel of the Pahalgam Massacre that the author covered in a just posted article, implicitly connects it with the latter. The article however holds its ground even if this terror attack had not taken place.
This article presents a stark yet sincere proposition: that moral excellence—understood not merely as a personal virtue but as a collective civilizational strategy—can serve as a powerful defence against the recurring threat of Indo-Pak conflict.
Without invoking familiar peace icons, worn-out treaties, or even sacred texts to 'sell' the argument, the urgency for a mutual moral defence stands out plainly in the backdrop of the horrific ongoing wars in the Middle East, and the glaring moral failure of all involved parties—regional and global—to prevent them.
Here, we explore a simple but powerful idea: that shared moral values, grounded in restraint, compassion, and justice, can be harnessed as a counterforce to the escalating mistrust between the two principal faith communities of the subcontinent, and to the dangerous arms race that shadows them.
Pahalgam Attack: India preparing for allout war
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A Natural Analogy: The ‘Taqi’ Horse
In ancient Arabic poetry, a Taqi horse had such strong, unshod hooves that it could gallop effortlessly across rugged, stony terrain. Likewise, India and Pakistan—two spiritually inclined nations with intertwined civilizational roots—can endure the rocky landscape of modern geopolitics if they reinforce their moral footing.
This is not an impossible ideal. It brings us directly to the heart of this article’s thesis:
A pivotal Qur’anic verse addressed to all of humanity declares:
“The noblest of you in the sight of God is the one most advanced in Taqwa (God-consciousness or moral restraint)” (49:13).
This notion, echoed in many verses emphasizing mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, epitomizes the Qur’anic universal notion of Taqwa or moral excellence—restraining indulgence, and upholding justice and uprightness in all our worldly dealings.
Yet, despite this universal moral teaching, which is repeated numerous time in the Qur’an many Muslims today claim religious superiority over Hindus. They often label them kafir—a Qur’anic term that originally referred to wilful deniers of truth and justice, not people of other faiths per se. In public discourse, some preachers devote hours to asserting Islam’s superiority, while overlooking the ethical foundation of Hindu teachings—like “Satyam Shivam Sundaram” (Truth is God, and God is beautiful)—which also inspires peace and noble conduct and has diverse shades of liberating meanings as the Qur’anic word taqwa.
Now let us take a serious look at some of the existential realities of this era.
1.The Colossal Human And Collateral Cost Of War:
Technology has advanced so prodigiously that the sellers of military wares - sitting thousands of miles away in the highly industrialized world can decimate an entire settlement or city of an adversary through long range aerial bombing and ballistic missiles. In a queer way, modern warfare is verging on a video-game that kids play without any emotional attachment and in excitement with their faces lit bright on simulated destruction of their animated foes.
Moral Disintegration and the Rise of Extremism
The Muslim preachers loudly proclaiming God’s Greatness - Allahu Akbar that is traditionally a war cry in their processions and the politically incited chants from Hindu crowds, mirror each other in provocation. These are not outliers but warnings—signs of a collective descent into moral deafness.
A few sparks of hatred that trace their roots to episodes such as those during Aurangzeb’s rule is now snowballing into a conflagration. Muslims that were becoming increasingly marginalized in post-independence India (1947) are now tacitly perceived as enemy of the nation. Hindus in Pakistan are also marginalized and have the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads in the ghost of forced conversion or fake apostasy or blasphemy charges. The situation is worsening day by day with the proliferation of bigoted Muslim theologians and fanatic Hindu leaders. Thus there are countless examples of Muslim Mullas (popular religious guides) leading noisy crowds against perceived injustices in contradiction to the Qur’an’s exhortation to ague or protest in the most handsome manner. The bigoted leaders and politicians utter no pacifying slogans or aspersions against the Muslims catering to the gross anti-Muslim sentiments of Hindu masses. The emotionally charged slogans of some Muslim preachers and Hindu crowds, far from the spirit of either faith, fuel mutual provocation. Thus extremism is on the rise feeding mutual hatred and mistrust.
Educational Crisis and Intellectual Decay
Greenhorn historians and communally-minded politicians in both India and Pakistan relentlessly dig into alleged injustices committed by rival communities in the past —whether recent or distant—to stoke a sense of victimhood among their people. Ironically, these societies often remain indifferent to their real, day-to-day hardships. In their pursuit of historical blame, these actors remain oblivious to the mutually suicidal consequences of their poisonous narratives.
Self-Imposed Prohibition To Teaching Secular Knowledge In Madrassas And Islamic Seminaries
In the early centuries of Islam, schools called madrassa (pupils sitting in halaqa before a teacher) disseminated all branches of knowledge as was in vogue at the time. There was no division between theological disciplines (notably, Aqidah, Fiqha, Sharai Law, Hadith, Tafseer) and universal sciences (like, geography, chemistry, algebra, trigonometry, medicine etc). However, post the Golden Age of Islam (8th-13th CE) the orthodoxy declared the universal subjects as haram (forbidden) on the alleged ground that they were innovations introduced by the Christian West. They clung to this view for many centuries, maintaining a theologically dominated curriculum in the madrassas and Islamic seminaries. This foreclosed the opportunity of the upcoming generations of Indian Muslims to compete with their Hindu brethren in the rapidly growing employment market, expanding civil service and practically all emerging lawful domains that needed candidates with all round knowledge of universal sciences. This rapidly expanding domain had no place for those with predominantly theological education regardless of religion. Ironically and tragically in their zeal to preserve their traditional education, the orthodox Ulama of India vehemently opposed a national education promotion drive under the title of RTU (Right to universal education) that could have liberated the madrassas from the straight jacket of traditional theology dominated course.
The Demise Of Moral Binding Of The Rival Civilizations
With political manoeuvring and polarization of faiths by the politician since early last century as a prelude to the partition (1947) the pluralistic image of undivided India (Hindustan) has transmuted from nationalistic ‘Sare Jahan Se Achcha Hindustan Hamara’ to the supremacist ‘Chino Arab Hamara Hindustan Hamara.’ Coming to this era, the psychological distance between the two mainstream communities continues to widen, especially in terms of interfaith relations. Tragically, they are sowing the seeds of yet another Indo-Pak war—one that, if the current trajectory continues, may not be far off. And as predicted by our Big Brother, hell has descended on the war zone. We not only all remain silent witness to it but tacitly invite it on our sacred land by doing little to extinguish the sparks of hatred that arise from time to time in the form of communal violence and injustices to the minorities including false flag protests and violence.
The list of such conflicting views and apprehensions are only increasing with time and so is the backwardness of Indian Muslim masses and so the mutual hatred and misapprehensions. These dichotomous attitudes – only a small cross section cited above are flared up in the event of a terror attack as just took place in Pahalgam a horrid milestone in the long chain of collective injustices and we end up blaming each other.
Summing Up.
1. The piece has attempted to weave history, analogy, theology, and contemporary politics into a consolidated narrative to remind the intelligent readers on both the camps that for at least 500 years of Islamic political domination, Hindus and Muslims lived as good neighbours despite the intrinsic civilizational differences. There is no evidence of any lingering inter-faith hostility or communal riots. Had there been any significant communal conflicts – let alone riots the British who succeeded the Moghuls in ruling India would have highlighted this in their contemporary records. But, to my knowledge based on standard history text books of early 50’s that I read in my school days, they did not leave any such record. If centuries of cohabitation and shared festivals once kept our hearts close, perhaps a revival of those moral instincts—compassion, restraint, and mutual dignity—can yet steer us away from another war. “Not through the might of arms, but through the quiet strength of moral will.”
Bottom Line:
India and Pakistan must evolve a morally grounded self-fortifying Peace strategy that may enable them to avoid yet another war in too distant a future. In light of the human cost and collateral damages of present day wars such a foregone eventuality would be terrible to say the least.
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Muhammad Yuns, a Chemical Engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, and a retired corporate executive has been engaged in an in-depth study of the Qur’an since early 90’s, focusing on its core message. He has co-authored the referred exegetic work, which received the approval of al-Aznar al-Sharif, Cairo in 2002, and following restructuring and refinement was endorsed and authenticated by Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl of UCLA, and published by Amana Publications, Maryland, USA, 2009
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