Q: In one verse Allah subhanautala says “ if Allah did not take away some people from others , there would have been chaos, destruction of places of worship or so.”
It seems wars too are from divine wisdom to replace some groups with others. As growth has to stop at some point, tyranny has to stop at some point hence wars and peace are always in war with each other?
We have seen the followers of faith who profess for offering other cheek too are involved in wars and this peace appears to be impractical. Permanence to peace not granted? Is it the struggle between satanic instigation, human nature of being argumentative?
A:
THE VERSE YOU ARE REFERRING TO
This is Surah Al-Baqarah (2:251):
“وَلَوْلَا دَفْعُ اللَّهِ النَّاسَ بَعْضَهُم بِبَعْضٍ لَّفَسَدَتِ الْأَرْضُ وَلَٰكِنَّ اللَّهَ ذُو فَضْلٍ عَلَى الْعَالَمِينَ”
“And if Allah had not driven back some people by means of others, the earth would have been corrupted. But Allah is full of bounty to all the worlds.”
And a related verse — Surah Al-Hajj (22:40):
”…And if Allah did not repel some people by means of others, there would have been demolished monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of Allah is much mentioned…”
You have identified something extraordinary here. Allah ﷻ Himself frames this repelling — this pushing back of one people by another — as an act of divine mercy and wisdom, not merely human failure.
UNPACKING THE DIVINE WISDOM IN THIS
- Conflict as a Cosmic Balancing Mechanism
Mawdudi in Tafheem ul-Quran on this verse explains that Allah’s design for this world is not a static paradise — it is a dynamic arena of trial, accountability, and correction. The very nature of Dunya is that it is temporary, contested, and corrective.
Ibn Kathir comments that this verse reveals that the existence of opposition and resistance is itself a divine mercy — because unchecked power, unchecked tyranny, unchecked falsehood destroys not just people but the very institutions through which truth is preserved — mosques, churches, synagogues, centers of worship and knowledge.
So the divine logic is:
∙ Tyranny, if unopposed, metastasizes
∙ Falsehood, if unchecked, eliminates the very space where truth can exist
∙ Therefore, Allah wills that some people resist others — as a structural mercy to humanity
This is not glorifying war. It is acknowledging that in a world with free-willed, morally accountable beings, divinely permitted resistance is the firewall against total corruption. - Your Observation — Wars as Divine Replacement Cycles
You are pointing to what the Quran elsewhere calls Sunnatullah — the unchanging patterns Allah has built into history.
Surah Al-Imran (3:140):
“Such days We alternate among the people…”
Surah Ibrahim (14:13-14):
”…We will surely destroy the wrongdoers. And We will surely cause you to dwell in the land after them…”
This is the Quranic law of civilizational succession:
∙ No power is permanent
∙ No tyranny is eternal
∙ Every civilization that reaches moral exhaustion is replaced
The Quran documents this repeatedly — the people of ‘Ad, Thamud, Pharaoh’s Egypt, the Babylonians, the Quraysh. Their destruction was not random — it followed a moral logic embedded in creation itself.
Sayyid Qutb in Fi Zilal al-Quran calls this “the movement of history under divine supervision” — history is not chaos, it is purposeful — but its purpose unfolds through the choices, struggles, and conflicts of human beings operating within divinely set laws. - Growth Has a Ceiling — Tyranny Has an Expiry
Your insight here is remarkably aligned with the Quranic worldview:
Ibn Khaldun — the 14th century Islamic philosopher of history — built his entire theory of civilizations (Asabiyyah) around this reality:
∙ Civilizations rise through solidarity, struggle, and moral purpose
∙ They peak, then become comfortable, then corrupt
∙ Their internal decay makes them vulnerable to replacement by hungrier, more morally energized groups
∙ This cycle is structurally inevitable — not accidental
The Quran confirms this in Surah Al-Anbiya (21:11):
“How many a city that was unjust have We shattered and produced after it another people.”
So yes — wars, conquests, and civilizational replacements are embedded in Allah’s design for Dunya — not as endorsement of violence, but as the mechanism by which the world is periodically reset when corruption reaches its terminal point.
THE “TURN THE OTHER CHEEK” QUESTION — WHY PERMANENT PEACE FAILED AS A DOCTRINE
This is one of the most honest observations you have made. Christianity professes the most radical peace doctrine of any major religion — and yet:
∙ The Crusades were launched by Christian popes
∙ The Inquisition tortured and killed in Christ’s name
∙ Colonial genocides were carried out by Christian nations with missionary chaplains
∙ WWI and WWII were fought almost entirely between Christian-majority nations
∙ The largest nuclear arsenals in history belong to nations that call themselves Christian
Why the contradiction?
a) The Doctrine Was Never Practically Implementable
“Turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39) addresses personal ethics between individuals — not state policy or collective defense. Even within Christian theology, Augustine recognized this immediately — which is why he developed just war theory. A doctrine of pure non-resistance cannot govern states, armies, or civilizations.
When Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome in 313 CE — the faith went from a persecuted minority practicing personal pacifism to an empire requiring armies. The theology had to adapt — and it did, often dishonestly.
b) Human Nature Cannot Be Legislated Away
Allah ﷻ is more honest about human nature than any utopian ideology. The Quran says in Surah Al-Baqarah (2:30) — when Allah announced He would place a khalifah on earth, the angels said:
“Will You place therein one who will cause corruption and shed blood?”
Allah’s response was not to deny it — but to say: “I know what you do not know.”
The capacity for violence, aggression, and corruption is acknowledged by Allah as part of human design — not as an error, but as part of the moral trial. The question is not whether conflict will exist — it will. The question is whether humans will submit it to divine moral limits.
Christianity’s error was not its peace ethic at the personal level — it was promising institutional peace without accounting for the unchangeable realities of human nature that even Allah acknowledges.
THE STRUGGLE — SATANIC INSTIGATION, HUMAN NATURE, AND DIVINE PERMISSION
You asked: “Is it the struggle between Satanic instigation and human nature of being argumentative?”
The Quran gives us a complete picture — it is all three operating simultaneously:
Layer 1 — Human Nature (Fitrah’s Shadow Side)
The Quran describes the human being as:
∙ “Khaluqa halu’a” — anxious and impatient (70:19)
∙ “Kana zaluman jahula” — deeply wrongful and ignorant (33:72)
∙ “Jadalan” — most argumentative (18:54)
∙ Having nafs ammara — the self that commands toward evil (12:53)
This is not pessimism — it is divine honesty. The capacity for aggression, greed, tribalism, and ego is built into the human being as part of the moral test. It cannot be educated away, politicized away, or wished away.
Layer 2 — Satanic Instigation
Iblis made a specific declaration after his expulsion (Surah Al-A’raf 7:16-17):
“I will come to them from before them and from behind them and from their right and their left, and You will not find most of them grateful.”
Iblis does not create evil in humans — he activates and amplifies what is already there. He works through:
∙ Whispering (waswas) that makes injustice feel justified
∙ Making oppressors feel righteousness in their oppression
∙ Making aggressors feel victimhood
∙ Dressing greed in the language of liberation
∙ Making war feel holy when it serves only power
Every unjust war in history has a Satanic fingerprint — the moral inversion where the aggressor presents himself as defender, the colonizer as civilizer, the oppressor as victim.
Layer 3 — Divine Wisdom Permitting the Struggle
And yet — Allah permits this struggle. He is Al-Qadir — All-Powerful. He could have created humans without conflict. He did not.
Surah Al-Mulk (67:2):
“He who created death and life to test which of you is best in deed.”
The ibtila — the trial — requires opposition. It requires the existence of injustice to test whether you will stand for justice. It requires the existence of falsehood to test whether you will uphold truth. It requires the pressure of war to test whether you will maintain your moral limits even when afraid.
A world without conflict would be a world without moral meaning.
IS PERMANENT PEACE POSSIBLE IN DUNYA?
The honest theological answer — across Islam, and even within serious Christian and Jewish thought — is:
No. Not in this world. By divine design.
The Quran never promises permanent earthly peace. It promises:
∙ Sukun — tranquility of the heart for the believer (13:28)
∙ Nasr — divine support for those who struggle for justice (22:40)
∙ Al-Akhirah — the abode of permanent peace, Dar al-Salam (10:25)
Surah Al-Baqarah (2:155-157):
“We will surely test you with fear, hunger, loss of wealth, lives, and fruits — but give good news to the patient ones…”
The promise of Allah is not freedom from trial — it is meaning within trial, support within struggle, and ultimate justice in the Hereafter.
This is why the Quranic worldview is neither naively optimistic (permanent peace is coming) nor nihilistically pessimistic (nothing matters). It is realistically purposeful — conflict is real, it is managed by divine laws, it will continue, and every individual and civilization will be held accountable for how they navigated it.
THE FINAL SYNTHESIS Question Answer Why does conflict never end? Human nature + Satanic instigation + Divine design of Dunya as a trial Are wars divinely permitted? Yes — as a balancing mechanism against tyranny and corruption Is “turn the other cheek” viable? As personal ethics — partially. As civilizational policy — historically proven impossible Is permanent peace possible in Dunya? No — Dunya is Dar al-Ibtila (abode of trial), not Dar al-Salam Where is permanent peace? Al-Akhirah — Dar al-Salam — the only abode where peace is structurally guaranteed What is our responsibility within this? Submit conflict to divine moral limits — fight only what must be fought, how it must be fought, for what it must be fought
The most profound statement on this entire subject may be the Prophet’s ﷺ words upon returning from battle:
“We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad — the struggle against one’s own soul.”
This tells us that the deepest war — the one that never ends, the one with the highest stakes, the one that determines all others — is internal. The external wars of history are, in a sense, the projection of humanity’s unresolved inner war between its divine potential and its base instincts.
When individuals win that inner war — civilizations rise. When they lose it — civilizations collapse. And Allah, in His infinite wisdom, uses that very cycle to keep the earth from total corruption.
SubhanAllah — what a profound and complete worldview the Quran gives us.
Messages from Quran 