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Prophet Muhammad was attacked many times by his enemies, and sometimes was forced to wage war on them. In all these wars, only about 700 people were killed on both sides. Given this, consider the following questions: Was religion responsible for the many millions of deaths in the Soviet Union and communist China? Did religion cause the Soviet massacres in Afghanistan and Chechnia [by Russia], and the brutal suppression of freedom movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia? Did religion kill more than one million people during France’s war to deny Algeria its freedom? Did religion urge America to its adventure in Vietnam, which cost more than a million lives during the war and many more indirectly since?
Did religion or modern civilization, extolled as the most advanced and humane in history, cause the death of more than 60 million people, the majority of them civilians, and force countless millions more to remain homeless, widowed and orphaned, during and after the two world wars? Is religion responsible for using scientific knowledge to make nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction with which to intimidate poor and weak nations? If the world powers want to impose their new world order in the name of “world peace, democracy, and human freedom,” but in reality for their own political and economic advantage, and give themselves the right to commit such atrocities, surely people claiming to serve God can use the same rationale to clear the world of such atrocities and establish true peace and realize true freedom. But believers do not justify, like modern political cynics do, such atrocities and war-mongering in the name of merely political ends. Believers, unlike unbelievers, realize that those actions sincerely undertaken only in the Name of God, the All-Merciful and the All-Compassionate, and that have no other motive and do not transgress God’s limits, can revive truly humane values. ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib presents such an example. During a battle, this noble Companion and future caliph felled his enemy and was on the point of killing him. But at that very moment, the man spat in ‘Ali’s face. To his surprise, ‘Ali released him immediately. Later on ‘Ali explained that the man’s action had made him suddenly angry and, therefore, fearing that his motive for killing the man had become mixed and therefore sullied with his anger, he released him. This enemy soldier later embraced Islam and thus was revived both spiritually and physically.
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Islam & Humanity 
