The Reality
Nine countries possess nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia together hold 90% of them. Each major nuclear power has the ability to destroy every city on Earth multiple times. These weapons exist not as last resorts but as constant threats — tools of political leverage built on the willingness to commit mass murder. They have been developed, tested, and deployed on civilian populations. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed 200,000 people in two days.
The Sufi Response
Iqbal wrote: 'The nation's politics, the mullah's religion — both are the same poison in different cups.' He understood that violence sanctioned by the state and violence sanctioned by religion both flow from the same source: the belief that some human lives matter less than others. The Sufi tradition has only one answer to weapons of mass destruction: there is no mass that is not divine. There is no destruction that is not a wound in God. The atomic bomb is the ultimate statement that we do not believe in the sacred. OurSufiWorld is the counterstatement.
Learn more about Allama Iqbal →What We Can Do
- →Support nuclear disarmament treaties and organizations
- →Vote for leaders committed to non-proliferation
- →Teach the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in every school
- →Refuse the logic that security comes from the capacity to destroy