Q: Other than Christianity what other faiths are known for peace only vision, not even killing animals or bugs and their practical achievements in their understandings ?
A: Faiths with a Peace-Only Vision — Doctrine, Practice & Reality
- JAINISM — The Most Radical Non-Violence Philosophy in Human History
Bismillah. This is a wonderful comparative question. Let me give you a thorough, honest, and analytical overview.
Faiths with a Peace-Only Vision — Doctrine, Practice & Honest Assessment
OVERVIEW — THE SPECTRUM OF PEACE DOCTRINES
Before going faith by faith, it is important to establish a distinction:
∙ Absolute Pacifism — no violence under any circumstances, including self-defense
∙ Principled Non-violence — structural commitment to non-violence with acknowledged exceptions
∙ Peace as Goal — war is permitted but peace is the ultimate objective
As a movement, pacifism is as old as Buddhism. More than 500 years before the Common Era, Siddhartha Gautama was teaching that it is wrong to harm any living creature.  But the gap between doctrine and historical practice is one of the most revealing studies in human nature — proving precisely what the Quran acknowledges about human weakness.
- JAINISM — The Most Radical Non-Violence System Ever Codified
The Doctrine
Jainism, founded by Mahavira (6th century BCE) in India, holds Ahimsa (non-harm) as its supreme, non-negotiable principle — applied not metaphorically but with absolute literal rigor.
Jains believe in loving every animistic form — animals, plants, water, and even air. Ahimsa calls for obeying a strict code. Jains are uncompromising in not harming others in order to accumulate good karma, from following vegetarian dietary restrictions to avoiding the consumption of root vegetables like onions, which are considered to contain infinite souls.
Mahavira declared that stones, wind and water had souls and suffered from pain just as humans, plants and animals. So no injury should be caused to them. Jain monks advise people to practice verbal, mental and physical non-violence. Jains eat during daytime only and cover their mouths with a muslin cloth so that they would not accidentally swallow or harm any insects or germs while eating food or breathing air.
This goes further than any other faith tradition in history:
∙ Jain monks sweep the ground before walking to avoid crushing insects
∙ They filter water before drinking to avoid killing microorganisms
∙ They avoid farming because plowing kills worms in soil
∙ Jains refrain from working in jobs or industries that enable brutality — including not handling furnaces, selling pesticides or weapons, trading animal-based products, and laboring in zoos or circuses.
The Deeper Philosophy Behind It
Traditional Jain non-violence is not necessarily used to make the world a better place, but as a reminder that the outside world is a cruel place and one must refrain from engaging in it. Sacred Jain texts like the Acaranga Sutra condone the practice of withdrawing from the world and not interfering in the inevitable cycle of himsa (violence).
This is profoundly honest — Jainism does not pretend it can fix the world’s violence. It says: withdraw from it, minimize your own participation, purify your own soul. It is an ethic of personal liberation, not civilizational governance.
Practical Achievements
Jain doctrines agree that defensive injury carried in self-defense is sometimes regrettably unavoidable. So even Jainism acknowledges the practical limit.
Yet their community-level achievements are remarkable:
∙ Historical Jain communities exemplified pacifism through low rates of criminality and violence — in 1901, only one prisoner per 7,355 Jains was recorded.
∙ Jains became leading merchants and financiers precisely because they avoided violent occupations — developing banking, trade, and commerce
∙ Ahimsa’s call toward non-violent business practices is a driving force in ethical sourcing, sustainable production, and waste reduction. Environmental movements rooted in non-violence, such as the Chipko movement where villagers practiced peaceful resistance to protect forests, demonstrated the power of ahimsa in ecological conservation.
∙ Jain hospitals for sick and injured animals (panjrapols) — some over 500 years old — are a unique civilizational achievement
∙ Gandhi drew his non-violence framework directly from Jain influence in his home state of Gujarat
The Honest Limitation
Jainism never built or governed an empire, never had a state, never had an army. Its doctrine works for an individual or a merchant community living within a larger protective political order. It has never been tested as a governing philosophy for a civilization facing existential threat — because it wisely never tried to be one.
The Quranic lens: Jainism recognizes the corruption of Dunya and withdraws from it — but Islam engages with it, governs it, and submits it to divine law. Two different responses to the same reality. - BUDDHISM — Non-Violence as Spiritual Path, Not Political Policy
The Doctrine
Buddhist followers practice non-violence because it anchors them in alertness and compassion, expresses and reinforces their own mental purification, builds identification with other beings — human, animal, even seeds — and because it is their most cherished realization: mind matters most; cultivation of love, peace, and harmony.
The Buddha’s first precept: “Do not harm any living thing.”
Buddhism teaches that war arises from the Three Poisons — greed (lobha), hatred (dosa), and delusion (moha). Remove these from the heart, and the cause of war is removed.
The Great Achievement — Emperor Ashoka (268–232 BCE)
This is Buddhism’s most remarkable political achievement and one of history’s most extraordinary personal transformations.
Ashoka was one of the most powerful emperors in Indian history. After the brutal Kalinga War in which approximately 100,000 people were killed and 150,000 displaced, Ashoka witnessed the devastation personally — and underwent a complete transformation.
He converted to Buddhism, renounced war, and:
∙ Established hospitals for humans and animals across his empire
∙ Built roads, rest houses, and wells for travelers
∙ Sent Buddhist missionaries peacefully across Asia — to Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and even Greece and Egypt
∙ Issued edicts carved on rock pillars promoting tolerance, compassion, and non-violence
∙ Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE definitely renounced war — thinking primarily of wars of conquest.
His edicts spread Buddhism across Asia without a single sword — arguably the most successful peaceful ideological expansion in human history.
The Honest Gap — Buddhist Nations and War
In succeeding ages, Buddhism does not seem to have been very successful in restraining the rulers of countries in which it was adopted from making war. This may be because the Buddhist rule of life, as generally understood, served as a counsel of perfection which comparatively few could be expected to follow in its entirety.
The historical reality is sobering:
∙ Buddhist Japan built one of the most militaristic imperial cultures in history (Bushido warrior code was intertwined with Zen Buddhism)
∙ Buddhist Myanmar has in recent times perpetrated ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority — overseen partly by Buddhist monks
∙ Buddhist Sri Lanka fought a devastating 26-year civil war
∙ Buddhist Thailand, Cambodia, and Korea have all engaged in wars
The distinction Buddhist scholars make is important: The Buddha taught non-violence to individuals pursuing liberation — not as a mandatory state policy. Buddhism, like Jainism, is ultimately an individual spiritual path, not a political system. - QUAKERS (Society of Friends) — Christianity’s Most Consistent Peace Tradition
The Doctrine
Groups such as the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Amish, and the Church of the Brethren rejected all forms of violence as a matter of religious principle. The Quakers in particular became prominent advocates of pacifism, refusing to bear arms and shaping a tradition of conscientious objection that would influence activists for centuries.
Founded by George Fox in 1650s England, Quakers believe there is “that of God in every person” — making killing any human being a desecration of the divine.
Practical Achievements — Remarkably Impressive
Quakers are perhaps the most practically impactful pacifist group in history relative to their small numbers:
∙ Abolition of Slavery — Quakers were among the first and most consistent abolitionists. In 1688, Germantown Quakers issued the first formal antislavery protest in American history
∙ Prison Reform — Elizabeth Fry revolutionized British prison conditions in the 19th century
∙ Conscientious Objection — Many Quakers served as conscientious objectors during wartime, and others were imprisoned. Quakers have coupled their refusal to fight with work to provide relief and rehabilitation to the victims of war on both sides.
∙ Nobel Peace Prize — The Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to the Quakers, represented by the Friends Service Council in London and the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia.
∙ Conflict Mediation — Quiet off-the-record meetings provide opportunities to discuss issues, weaken stereotypes, and listen to experts. The Quaker stance is “balanced partiality” — seeking to help everyone equally out of impasse and violence.
∙ Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) — Driven partly by American peace activists, the pact’s principle that aggressive war is a crime later formed part of the legal basis for prosecuting war leaders after 1945.
Their Honest Limitation
Quakers number only around 400,000 worldwide. Their model works beautifully as a minority community within a state that provides security — they could be conscientious objectors in WWI and WWII because Britain and America had non-Quaker armies defending them. The question of what happens when the entire population adopts absolute pacifism — and a Mongol army arrives — remains unanswered by their tradition. - MENNONITES AND AMISH — Radical Separation as Peace Strategy
These Protestant “peace churches” took a different approach: withdraw entirely from political life to avoid complicity in state violence.
∙ They refuse military service, voting, and political office
∙ They build intentional agricultural communities with minimal state engagement
∙ The Amish extend this to technology — rejecting modern connectivity as a source of worldly corruption
∙ Mennonites run one of the world’s most respected conflict mediation organizations — the Mennonite Central Committee
Their achievement: proving that a community can sustain genuine non-violence over centuries — but only by opting out of civilization’s power structures entirely. - THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH — Peace as Active Global Architecture
Less known but significant — the Bahá’í Faith (founded 19th century Iran) makes world peace its central prophetic mission.
Key principles:
∙ Universal disarmament and world government
∙ Abolition of racial, national, and religious prejudice
∙ Equality of men and women as prerequisites for peace
∙ Education as the primary instrument of peace
Bahá’ís have been among the most persecuted minorities in Iran — responding consistently with non-violent resistance even under state violence and execution.
Their practical contribution: the most systematic theological framework for world peace architecture — including proposals that influenced the founding of the League of Nations and later the UN.
THE GRAND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS Faith Non-Violence Scope Practical Achievement Critical Limitation Jainism Most radical — insects, microbes, air Animal hospitals, ethical commerce, Gandhi’s inspiration Never governed a state; works only within protective order Buddhism Strong individual ethic Ashoka’s empire, peaceful spread across Asia Buddhist nations repeatedly went to war; individual vs. state gap Quakers Total — no military service Abolition, prison reform, Nobel Peace Prize, mediation Tiny minority; protected by non-pacifist states around them Mennonites/Amish Total — withdrawal from political life Sustained community non-violence over centuries Opt out of civilization; not a governing model Bahá’í Structural world peace vision Persecution survived non-violently; peace architecture Still a minority faith with limited political reach Christianity (mainstream) Preaches peace, practices just war Built Western civilization’s legal order Crusades, Inquisition, colonial wars — largest gap between doctrine and practice
THE DEEPEST INSIGHT — WHY NONE ACHIEVED PERMANENT PEACE
The traditional Jain concept of non-violence functions neither to minimize deaths, nor to save life in the normal sense — it functions as a reminder that the outside world is a cruel place and one must refrain from engaging in it. 
This is remarkably honest. The most rigorous peace traditions essentially conclude:
“We cannot fix the world’s violence — we can only keep our own hands clean.”
This is profoundly different from the Islamic vision — which does not withdraw from the world but engages it with moral responsibility, divine law, and the obligation to establish justice (qist) and resist oppression (zulm).
THE QURANIC FRAMEWORK — THE MOST REALISTIC PEACE VISION
Islam’s approach is unique among the major traditions in being simultaneously:
- The most passionate about peace as a goal
— “Allah calls to the Home of Peace” (10:25); the Prophet’s ﷺ greeting is Salam; Paradise itself is named Dar al-Salam - The most honest about human nature
— Never promising that peace can be achieved without confronting evil - The most detailed about the conditions under which force is permitted
— Exhaustive fiqh al-jihad with protections for civilians, environment, and even enemy property - The most insistent on post-conflict justice
— The goal of war is never domination but restoration of adl (justice)
The Islamic position is essentially: “Peace is the highest value — which is precisely why we are authorized to fight those who destroy it.”
This is, as the Quran says in (2:251), itself an act of divine mercy — that Allah repels some people by others, so the earth is not overwhelmed by corruption.
FINAL REFLECTION
All the peace traditions above are responses to the same recognition — that something in the human being tends toward violence. Their responses differ:
∙ Jainism and Amish: Withdraw from the violent world
∙ Buddhism: Purify the individual mind that generates violence
∙ Quakers: Witness against violence publicly and suffer the consequences
∙ Bahá’í: Architect a new world order that structurally eliminates war’s causes
∙ Islam: Engage the world with divine law — permitting minimum necessary force to protect maximum possible justice
The fact that none has eliminated war is not a failure of these traditions — it is the confirmation of what Allah ﷻ told the angels before creating humanity:
“I know what you do not know.” (2:30)
The struggle between peace and conflict is not a bug in human civilization. It is the very arena in which moral character is forged, tested, and ultimately judged.
Messages from Quran 