Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I The Sunday Guardian I 8 June 2014

During the lifetime of the Prophet of Islam many of his fellow men opposed Islam and engaged in plotting against Islam and Muslims.

The Quran has mentioned this at several places. But the counter strategy advocated by the Quran was not to unearth their plots and launch movements to defeat them, or even finally to wage war against them.

On the contrary, the Prophet and his companions were enjoined to place their trust in God alone. That is to say, ignoring the plots and antagonism, trusting only in God and rising above circumstances, they were to continue all activities which were of a positive nature. This was an extremely important injunction. By giving this guidance, God set them on a course of positive thinking, which left no room for negative thinking.

In short, this Quranic teaching encouraged the early Muslims to live in a self-sufficient way, free of baneful influence of their opponents. If you have this obsession that others are plotting against you, and that everyone has turned your enemy, it will result in your starting to suspect everyone, to the extent that even if a member of your own community underscores the importance of tolerance and avoidance, you will take it in a negative light and dub him an agent of the enemy.

In this way, you will weaken yourselves by turning your own people away from you. One harmful aspect of such negative obsession is that one loses all objectivity in thinking. One's entire outlook becomes partisan and prejudiced. One is unable to see reality as it is. One becomes like the man who can see only the thorns in a garden of roses or the colour-blind person to whom a garden blossoming with flowers will appear in melancholy shades of grey.