PROTECTION OF PURPOSE
Through unilateral avoidance of conflict and not allowing irrelevant matters to become obstacles in one’s path, one can continue to strive towards one’s positive goals.
The Quran says: ‘We have appointed for every community ways of worship to observe. Let them not dispute with you on this matter. Call them to the path of your Lord—for surely, you are rightly guided’ (22:67).
‘Let them not dispute with you’ in the above verse means that one should not give them any reason for disputing. The price for putting up with a dispute with an opponent will be that the purpose of inviting them to God will be affected. The benefit of avoiding a dispute is that the issue of inviting them to God will remain central to one’s relationship with them. It is to the benefit of the one who invites others to God that this issue alone remains at the top of their dialogue. Through unilateral avoidance of conflict, they must try to ensure this.
Consider the following example of Maulana Muhammad Ilyas (d. 1944), founder of the Tablighi Jamaat movement. In the initial days of the movement, he went to an area called Mewat (a region in northern India, where the movement began). He saw a villager standing at the edge of his field. The Maulana asked him to recite the kalima (the Islamic creed). This man was not familiar with this sort of thing. He got angry and pushed the Maulana, who fell to the ground. After this, the Maulana silently got up and then, without any complaint, said to him that he would recite the kalima and that the man could repeat it.
This example very clearly illustrates how to appropriately respond to such challenging situations. Had Maulana Ilyas complained about the wrong action of the villager, the central point of their relationship—which was related to inviting the man to God—would have shifted. The Maulana unilaterally ignored the man’s action so that religion alone remained the basis of their relationship and no irrelevant matter became an obstacle in it.
In matters like this, there can be two ways of thinking. One is to give importance to the excesses committed by the other party and complain and agitate against them. The other is to ignore the excesses of the other party, exercise patience, and avoid conflict. The first approach leads to the central focus of the relationship with the other party to change completely, while with the second approach, the central focus continues to remain unchanged.
