Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: Episode 129
Pyeong Hwa Gyeong: A Selection of True Parents’ Speeches
Book 3: The Mission of Religion in Achieving God’s Ideal
Speech 11: Islam and the Establishment of World Peace, pg 449-451
Islam and the Establishment of World Peace
October 21, 1990 Cairo, Egypt
Address at a meeting of Islamic leaders at the Council for the World’s Religions
(Given on Father’s Behalf)
Honorable religious leaders, esteemed scholars and beloved guests:
Thank you for your participation in this most urgent summit. By responding at such short notice to this call for peace, your presence here surely brings great joy to God.
God is the origin of peace
Of course you know that we are surrounded by tensions of frightening proportions. Political and economic rivalries and historical resentments have flourished so abundantly that even those who see only with earthly eyes recognize that our very survival is threatened. In the face of annihilation, human beings, like all created species, respond with emergency measures. This is why we now see such frantic activity in all spheres of human enterprise. In the effort to prevent unspeakable tragedy, leaders desperately propose solutions according to their particular orientation. Some seek military solutions, others political or economic. While such actions may somehow contribute to the establishment of peace, they can never generate the primary insights and analysis upon which lasting peace can be founded.
Only truly religious and spiritual people understand the nature and origin of conflict. And only those who know the actual origins of disorder can bring about a solution. This is why, in this time of great emergency, I have requested your presence and participation. Of course, peace on earth will ultimately require insights from all spheres of human enterprise—politics, media, and so on. However, the root of peace is in God, and it can only come to this world through those who conform their lives to His perfect Will.
Realizing that world peace ultimately depends on the human response to the divine Will, I founded the International Religious Foundation. From the earliest days of the Unification movement I always devoted the greatest portion of our resources to serving other religions. In the 1950s many Unificationist families did not have enough to eat, and members complained to me about the funds I devoted to the cause of interreligious harmony. I suffered to see their hardships and begged for their patience because I knew Satan would ultimately resort to racial and religious war in his effort to destroy humankind’s future. For forty years I poured everything into this effort, always insisting upon true love, harmony and cooperation among all religious believers. Now these great saints and peacemakers in the International Religious Foundation, from every major religion, have the divine mission to thwart Satan’s plan and pioneer a future of lasting peace.
As you know, Satan always seeks to bring the greatest destruction and darkness upon the human race. Throughout this century his plan was perpetuated through the God-denying totalitarianism of communism. Through state oppression and torture, entire generations were forbidden to hear the truth of God’s Word. Countless millions were slaughtered in the name of building a society without God. This treacherous, satanic instrument flourished for seventy years, coming to occupy two-thirds of the world. Political analysts have yet to explain how this empire collapsed overnight. The spiritually astute, however, know with assurance that it was God’s power and the power of living in perfect accordance with divine law that caused Satan to surrender and give up his evil reign of terror.
Now Satan has launched another offensive for the destruction of the human race. His strategy employs two destructive forces even more fundamental and threatening than communism. This is through religious war and racial war. Anyone can see we are standing on the threshold of conflicts of such devastating proportions that they would cast our human race, if it survives at all, into the deepest darkness, barely able to maintain life on a devastated and ravaged planet. If races, religions and nations limit their thinking to self-benefit, the only one who will gain is Satan, the enemy of God and of the human race.
For this reason, the unending concern of God’s heart is related to these two issues. Why did God reveal Himself to the prophets and create the great religions of the world? Of course it was to enable the human race to return to Him, and then, in perfect oneness with His blessed Will, establish a peaceful world. Humankind must know God’s original vision for the world and know the reason God revealed himself to the prophets. Surely no one expressed this original ideal of God more deeply than the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), both in word and in deed. God who has infinite compassion would not like to see even the littlest one perish. What would we be then if we tolerated or even perpetuated interreligious strife knowing that this is the exact opposite of God’s desire? We can never lend our hand so willingly to Satan’s plan to destroy innocent children and cast humankind into unspeakable darkness.
The same is true of racial war. We are one family descended from common parents. God intended all races to live in harmony as brothers and sisters. Again the blessed Prophet knew this and history clearly records that he exemplified this understanding through the substantial deeds of his life. It is our unavoidable mission now to reveal God’s whole plan for peace and harmony and cooperation between races and religions. Anyone who isolates only disparate portions of God’s revealed truth and preaches against others goes against God. We cannot depend on the masses or even political, economic and military leaders to understand the revealed Will of God as fully as we who have devoted ourselves to religious and spiritual leadership. Let us educate humankind about God’s original, broad vision for peace and brotherhood. At this time in human history nothing could be more painful and offensive to God than religious and racial war.
FFWPU, USA