Islam and Peace

My focus in this essay will be on Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988).

In this essay, I aim to make a modest contribution to the dialogue between religions. My point of departure is the book Peace Movements in Islam (2022), edited by Juan Cole. Nowadays, we often read about violence in Islam. Yet there also appears to be an interesting and largely overlooked tradition of nonviolent thought and action within the Muslim world. My focus will be on Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988), the “Muslim Gandhi,” who led an army of 100,000 nonviolent followers in resistance to British rule in India.

Khan was born in the town of Utmanzai (now a small settlement north of Peshawar, Pakistan). During his long life, he spent approximately thirty years in prison for protesting the injustices of the governments of British India and, later, Islamic Pakistan. His two great heroes were Gandhi and the Prophet Muhammad, whose examples inspired him to dedicate his life to nonviolent civil disobedience. His understanding of Islam was straightforward: he favored a nonviolent interpretation of his tradition and set aside those aspects that could be used to justify violence.

Khan understood Islam in terms of selfless love and service to others:

“It is my inmost conviction that Islam is amal, yakeen, muhabat—selfless service, faith, and love.”

In his early years, Khan sought to transform the Pathan culture of which he was a part. Central to this culture was badal (the code of revenge): if a person was killed, family honor had to be restored through retaliation by the victim’s relatives. This way of life was marked by extreme violence—“how to kill and how to die.” Khan wanted to change this, and he found encouragement when he encountered Gandhi’s teachings on nonviolent resistance. Khan later reflected on this as follows:

“As a young boy, I had violent tendencies; the hot blood of the Pathans was in my veins. But in jail I had nothing to do except read the Koran. I read about the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca, about his patience, his suffering, his dedication. I had read it all before, as a child, but now I read it in the light of what I was hearing all around me about Gandhiji’s struggle against the British Raj (…) When I finally met Gandhiji, I learned all about his ideas of nonviolence and his Constructive Program. They changed my life forever.”

The Pathan, or Pashtun, culture from which Khan emerged is the same cultural milieu that later drew many Muslim students into the Pakistani Taliban. Yet while the Taliban promoted an interpretation of Islam characterized by exclusivism and repression, Khan advocated openness and equality. He opposed purdah (the seclusion of women and restrictions on their education) and established schools for girls. Whereas the Taliban viewed music with hostility, Khan incorporated drums and bagpipes when he organized his nonviolent army, the Khudai Khidmatgars (“Servants of God”).

According to the author of the chapter on Abdul Ghaffar Khan (James L. Rowell), this suggests that Pashtun culture should be understood in a more nuanced way. Khan came from the same region as the Taliban, which indicates that the political theology of this area (between Afghanistan and Pakistan) is, at the very least, more fluid and diverse, rather than uniformly or inherently violent.

It is well known that for the Hindu Mohandas Gandhi, nonviolence (ahimsa) was an essential core of living in accordance with God and Truth. Khan held a similar conviction: for him, nonviolence was the essential heart of Islam. Khan became one of Gandhi’s closest friends and allies. Both consistently refrained from advocating violence, and this was far more than a mere strategy. As Gandhi teaches:

“The time has now passed when the followers of one religion can stand and say, ours is the only true religion and all others are false. The growing spirit of toleration towards all religions is a happy augury of the future.”

Khan possessed a similarly inclusive spirit and a love for all religions, according to his biographers. However, what is most remarkable and relatively little known is that Khan assembled a large nonviolent army, the Khudai Khidmatgars, which was committed to the practice of nonviolence as developed by Gandhi. As Khan affirmed:

“The Prophet has said that the most pious and God-fearing youth is he who brings comfort to the creatures of God. The mission of the Khudai Khidmatgars is to give comfort to all creatures of God. Remember this also that the Muslims alone are not the creatures of God. The Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Christians, and the Parsis, in short, all the creatures that live in this world are the creatures of God.”

For Khan, the Prophet Muhammad represented a model of nonviolence, while Gandhi was the one who had revived this spirit of nonviolence in modern times; for Khan, Gandhi spoke to the very core values of Islam.

Badshah Khan—however unlikely it may seem—was able to persuade the Pathans to abandon their violent traditions. Let us hear Jawaharlal Nehru:

“There is nothing so surprising about our Frontier Province as the conversion of a war-like people to the doctrine of non-violence. That conversion is, of course, far from complete and the Pathan does not worry himself about philosophical or metaphysical speculations. But it is patent that in action he has been remarkably non-violent. (…) That was due undoubtedly to the influence of one man—Abdul Ghaffar Khan—whose word was almost law to his people, for they love him and trusted him.”

In 1929, Khan was able to mobilize between 80,000 and 100,000 members of his own Pashtun people to engage in nonviolent resistance. He became known as “Badshah” Khan, the “King of the Khans,” and a great leader for his Pathans, just as Gandhi had been for much of the rest of India. Under Khan’s influence and perseverance, the Pathans took several pledges:

“I am a Khudai Khidmatgar; and as God needs no service, but serving his
creation is serving him, I promise to serve humanity in the name of God.”

“I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge. I promise to forgive
those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty.”

How was Khan able to achieve this? The figure of one hundred thousand represented a very significant proportion of all Pashtun Muslims at the time. Khan walked more than 50 kilometers every day, moving from village to village to promote nonviolence, education, and social progress.

Just as Martin Luther King Jr. regarded nonviolence as the only practical solution for African Americans in the United States, Badshah Khan looked at his own historical reality and concluded that nonviolence was the most effective strategy. Khan observed:

“Two types of movements were launched in our province (…) The violent movement [the uprisings before 1919] created hatred in the hearts of the people against violence. But the nonviolent movement won love, affection and sympathy of the people (…) If a Britisher was killed [during the violent uprisings] not only the culprit was punished, but the whole village and entire region suffered for it. The people held the violence and its doer responsible for repression. In the nonviolent movement we courted self-suffering (…) thus, it won love and sympathy of the people.”

Khan’s belief in and commitment to nonviolence were grounded in a personal credo and sincere devotion, while at the same time being highly tactical.

Badshah Khan had his own understanding of jihad: before one can struggle against the British, one must first end the violence and murderous impulses within one’s own heart. Overcoming one’s personal weakness is the greater jihad—this is what God requires of us.

However, how Khan could regard the Prophet Muhammad—who at times took up the sword as a warrior—as a source of inspiration for nonviolence is not fully understood by Rowell. He suggests that Khan may not have regarded the Qur’an as an infallible text. In any case, Khan’s understanding of Islam was simple, peace-oriented, and universal, centered on a forgiving God. “Do good works in a spirit of peace and nonviolence” was his straightforward vision of Islam.

Unfortunately, my conclusion must be somewhat pessimistic. The question is: what, in the end, has Badshah Khan left us? After the partition of Pakistan and India, new forces emerged that stood in sharp opposition to the spirit of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated shortly after independence. The Khudai Khidmatgars were systematically suppressed and dismantled by the new Pakistani government. According to some sources, the Pashtuns’ turn toward nonviolence did not prove lasting. For James L. Rowell, Khan remains theologically highly significant but, unfortunately, largely forgotten. However, the fact that Khan spent approximately thirty years in prison—fifteen of them in Pakistan—more than Nehru, Gandhi, and King combined, makes him, according to Rowell, one of the greatest Muslim nonviolent resistance leaders of our time.

Let me attempt to find some closing words to express my personal feelings. I did not know this exceptionally wise and courageous man, Badshah Khan, before beginning this essay. On the internet there are photographs of him together with, among others, the far better-known Gandhi. It is deeply impressive to see him. I looked at these images with great respect. How could I not have known him? And the fact that Gandhi was ultimately assassinated, and Khan imprisoned for thirty years, is unsettling. “Nonviolence is not for cowards.” (Gandhi)

Even within my own Christian tradition we find echoes of nonviolent thinking. For example, in the thought of Jacques Ellul (Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, 1969), he argues that the ultimate choice is between violence and faith in the Resurrection. Faith in the Resurrection—the highest spiritual “violence,” understood as the overcoming of the necessity of death—excludes every other form of violence. His analysis addresses a world that rejects faith and repeatedly resorts to violence as a perceived necessity, alongside the radical rejection of violence in Christ.

Or in the work of Desiderius Erasmus (Querela Pacis, “The Complaint of Peace,” 1517). It must nevertheless be noted that Erasmus ultimately still acknowledges the doctrine of the “just war” (war as a last resort), although for him warfare always remains in tension with the Gospel.

Finally, there is the Roman Catholic Church, which in a long series of texts repeatedly emphasizes the inalienable dignity of the human person—see, for example, the recent declaration Dignitas Infinita (2024). A quotation from it [38]:

“No war is worth the tears of a mother who has seen her child mutilated or killed; no war is worth the loss of the life of even one human being, a sacred being created in the image and likeness of the Creator; no war is worth the poisoning of our common home; and no war is worth the despair of those who are forced to leave their homeland and are deprived, from one moment to the next, of their home and all the family, friendship, social and cultural ties that have been built up, sometimes over generations.”

And in [39] we read:

“Moreover, together with Pope St. John Paul II, the Church pleas “in the name of God and in the name of man: Do not kill! Do not prepare destruction and extermination for people! Think of your brothers and sisters who are suffering hunger and misery! Respect each one’s dignity and freedom!” As much now as ever, this is the cry of the Church and of all humanity. Pope Francis underscores this by stating, “We can no longer think of war as a solution because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’ Never again war!”

This is radical and highly emotionally charged language. The idea of a “just war” is questioned here [39] by the late Pope Francis. This would, de facto, make the Roman Catholic Church pacifist!

I used ChatGPT to translate my Dutch into correct English.