Has There Ever Been a World Without War?

 

Has There Ever Been a World Without War?

History, Justice, and the Coming of Islam as a Mercy to the World

وما أرسلناك إلا رحمةً للعالمين

Al-Anbiya 21:107 — And We have not sent you except as a mercy for all the worlds.

 

Available in: English • Urdu • Arabic • Hindi • Telugu • Tamil • Bengali • Malayalam

 

Introduction: The Question That Demands Honesty

A sincere seeker of truth once asked: ‘Has there ever been a period in human history without conflicts and wars — especially before the last 1,400 years? If not, then why? And who was always on the wrong side?’

This is not merely a historical question. It is a theological, moral, and civilizational inquiry. The honest answer, drawn from archaeology, recorded history, and divine revelation, is both sobering and illuminating.

“War is an organized effort at theft — a structured, deliberate attempt by one group to take what another group possesses, whether it be territory, resources, power, or ideological control.”

— Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

History confirms this. And the Quran predicted it, diagnosed it, and provided the only lasting cure.

Part 1: The Historical Record — An Unbroken Chain of War

Recorded human history — stretching back over 5,000 years of documented civilization — contains no extended era of genuine global peace. This is not a pessimistic assertion; it is a documented fact confirmed by every major historical survey.

The Earliest Conflicts (~3500 BCE onward)

The Battle of Hamoukar (~3500 BCE) in Mesopotamia is among the earliest known examples of organized warfare between city-states. Archaeological evidence shows systematic destruction and mass death. From this point forward, the historical record is a near-continuous chronicle of conquest, plunder, and power struggles.

The causes were consistent across all eras and cultures:

• Competition for land, water, and agricultural resources

• Accumulation of wealth creating inequality and envy

• Tribal and ethnic identity used to justify violence against ‘the other’

• Imperial ambition — the desire for power with no moral ceiling

• The absence of a universally accepted divine moral framework

Five Thousand Years — No Peace

A 2025 academic study published by Oxford University examined the last 5,000 years of human history and concluded that:

“Early human conflicts were centered on competition for essential resources like water, land, and trade routes, which later evolved into struggles for political dominance and territorial expansion. Ideological motivations, as seen in the Crusades, often intertwined with economic interests, shaping the nature of conflict throughout history.”

— Sangaralingam Ramesh, The Political Economy of Contemporary Human Civilisation, Oxford/Springer 2025

Even the famed Pax Romana — the so-called ‘Roman Peace’ (27 BCE–180 CE) — was peace only within the Roman Empire’s borders, maintained by brutal military suppression of conquered peoples and constant wars at the frontier. It was the peace of the oppressor, not the peace of justice.

Part 2: The Major Powers Before Islam — A Survey

Let us examine the dominant civilizations that existed before the revelation of Islam (610 CE), looking honestly at their nature, their religious identity, and their record of justice or oppression.

Power / Empire

Dominant Religion

Period

Pattern of Conflict

Assyrian Empire

Polytheism

934–609 BCE

Systematic terror, mass deportation, state-sponsored cruelty

Greek/Macedonian Empire

Polytheism / Philosophy

336–323 BCE

Military conquest across 3 continents under Alexander

Roman Republic/Empire

Paganism → Christianity

509 BCE–476 CE

Imperial expansion driven by economic greed & domination

Byzantine Empire

State Christianity

330–610 CE

700-yr Roman-Persian war; persecution of Jews & heretics

Sassanid Persian Empire

Zoroastrianism

224–651 CE

Aggressive expansion, religious persecution, endless war

Pre-Islamic Arabia

Polytheism / Tribalism

Pre-610 CE

Perpetual tribal wars, infanticide, slavery, lawlessness

The Assyrian Empire (934–609 BCE): Terror as State Policy

The Assyrian Empire was the first superpower to systematically use mass terror as a deliberate instrument of governance. Their own royal inscriptions boast of flaying prisoners alive, impaling conquered peoples on stakes, and mass deportation of entire populations to break their cultural identity. This was not war as a reluctant last resort — it was cruelty as policy, centuries before Caesar or Rome.

Alexander the Great (336–323 BCE): Conquest as Legacy

Alexander’s military campaigns spanned from Greece across Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan, and into India — covering over 2 million square miles and subjugating more than 50 million people. While he showed occasional magnanimity toward conquered rulers, the foundation of his empire was military violence and the total subordination of peoples to Macedonian Hellenistic dominance. He died at 32, and his empire immediately fractured into the wars of the Diadochi — his generals tearing apart what he had built.

Rome vs. Persia: 700 Years of Pointless War

Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of pre-Islamic futility is the Roman-Persian Wars — a conflict that spanned approximately 700 years, from 54 BCE to 628 CE, involving the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Parthian Empire, and the Sassanid Empire.

“In spite of years of conflict and dozens of campaigns, nothing of long-term significance resulted from these wars. The border between the empires remained roughly the same for most of the 700-year period.”

— Heritage History

Seven centuries of bloodshed. Tens of millions dead. Entire regions devastated. Cities burned and rebuilt only to be burned again. And at the end — the same border. The same line. Nothing gained, nothing resolved.

The cause? Historians are explicit: ‘Economic greed and the desire to represent the single most dominant military and political power in the ancient world.’

By 628 CE, after the final Byzantine victory over the Sassanids, both empires were shattered — financially ruined, militarily exhausted, morally hollow. They had destroyed each other for nothing. And into this vacuum, the Rashidun Caliphate — newly united under the banner of La ilaha illallah — emerged and within a generation reshaped the entire civilized world.

Pre-Islamic Arabia: The World of Al-Jahiliyyah

The Arabian Peninsula itself was not spared. The pre-Islamic Arabs were locked in perpetual intertribal warfare — the famous wars of Basus and Dahis and Ghabra’ lasting decades over a camel or a race horse. Female infanticide was practiced openly. Slavery was absolute. Women had no legal standing. Blood revenge could perpetuate violence across generations with no mechanism of resolution.

This was the world into which the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was born — not as a theoretical backdrop, but as a lived daily reality.

Part 3: Who Was ‘On the Wrong Side’?

This is where intellectual honesty is most critical — and where the Islamic framework is most distinctive.

The Quranic Framework: Not Faith Labels, But Justice vs. Oppression

Islam does not frame history as a simple binary of ‘believers’ versus ‘disbelievers.’ The Quran frames history through the lens of ‘Adl (justice) versus Zulm (oppression). Empires, regardless of their religious banner, rose and fell on this moral axis.

ظَهَرَ الفَسَادُ فِي البَرِّ وَالبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيدِي النَّاسِ

Ar-Rum 30:41 — Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what people’s hands have earned.

وَإِذَا أَرَدْنَا أَن نُهْلِكَ قَرْيَةً أَمَرْنَا مُتْرَفِيهَا فَفَسَقُوا فِيهَا فَحَقَّ عَلَيْهَا الْقَوْلُ فَدَمَّرْنَاهَا تَدْمِيرًا

Al-Isra 17:16 — When We decide to destroy a city, We command those given to luxury to reform, but they persist in sin, and so the word is justified against them, and We destroy them utterly.

The Sunnatullah (the Divine Law operating in history) is clear: nations are not destroyed for their ethnicity, language, or even their nominal religious label. They are destroyed for moral corruption, systemic oppression, and arrogant rejection of justice. This principle is universal and applies equally to Muslims who abandon justice as it does to any other people.

The Pattern Before Islam: Who Drove the Oppression?

Looking at the pre-Islamic world through this lens, the overwhelming pattern of systemic, organized injustice came from two primary sources:

1. Polytheistic Imperial Systems

Rome, Greece, Assyria, Persia under Zoroastrianism — these empires operated without any divine moral accountability structure that limited the power of rulers over subjects. The gods of these empires were not moral legislators. They were projections of human power — capricious, partisan, serving the interests of those who controlled the temples and the armies.

There was no concept of a sovereign divine law that kings themselves were subject to. The result: unlimited human power, unlimited human oppression.

2. Corrupted Monotheism — The Byzantine Church-State

The Christianity of the Byzantine Empire by the 4th–6th centuries CE had undergone a fundamental transformation from the original message of Sayyiduna ‘Isa (peace be upon him). The Council of Nicaea (325 CE) under Emperor Constantine established Christianity as a state religion — not for spiritual reasons, but for political consolidation. From that moment, Byzantine Christianity became:

• An instrument of imperial power rather than a prophetic message to power

• A source of persecution against Jews, Arian Christians, Gnostics, and theological dissenters

• A justification for the Crusades (centuries later), framed as religious war but driven by territorial and economic greed

• Complicit in the oppressive class structure of the Byzantine state

This was far removed from the teachings of ‘Isa ibn Maryam (peace be upon him), who called the powerful to account, championed the poor, and never sought worldly dominion.

Importantly — and this is critical from an Islamic perspective — the Quran does NOT condemn Christians or Zoroastrians as peoples. It condemns systems of power built on arrogance and oppression, regardless of the banner they carry. The Quran itself (Surah Ar-Rum 30:2–4) expressed hope that the Byzantine Romans would recover their strength against the Sassanid Persians — suggesting that even a corrupted people of the Book was, at that moment in history, preferable in certain respects to fire-worshipping imperial Persia.

The Real ‘Wrong Side’: The System, Not the People

The deepest answer from the Islamic worldview is this: the ‘wrong side’ throughout pre-Islamic history was not any single ethnic or religious group — it was every system of human power that:

• Placed no divine limit on the ruler’s authority over human beings

• Had no concept of equal human dignity before one law

• Used religion as a tool to legitimize conquest rather than constrain it

• Lacked a mechanism for the weak to seek justice against the powerful

• Had no divinely revealed ethics for the conduct of war

All the great pre-Islamic empires — without exception — failed on most or all of these criteria. That is the honest historical verdict.

Part 4: Why Was There Perpetual Conflict? — The Islamic Diagnosis

The Quran does not merely observe human conflict. It diagnoses its root cause with precise clarity.

Root Cause 1: The Absence of Complete Divine Guidance

Before the final revelation to Muhammad (peace be upon him), the divine guidance given to previous prophets had been either partially lost, deliberately corrupted, or had its original universal scope limited to a specific people and era. Musa (peace be upon him) was sent primarily to Bani Isra’il. ‘Isa (peace be upon him) was sent specifically to them as well. There was no complete, preserved, universally applicable divine system that all of humanity could access and live by.

Without such a system, human beings defaulted to tribal law, imperial decree, or philosophical speculation — all of which were subject to human bias, power dynamics, and moral corruption.

Root Cause 2: No Accountability Before Divine Law for Rulers

Every pre-Islamic civilization had a structure where rulers were either themselves divine (Pharaoh), above the law (Roman Emperor), or had clergy who served their interests. There was no concept of a caliph who was himself subject to the same Shariah as the poorest citizen — a concept Islam introduced and which ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) embodied when he said: ‘If I deviate from the right path, correct me, even with your swords.’

كلُّكُمْ رَاعَى وَكُلُّكُمْ مَسْؤُولٌ عَنْ رَعِيَّتِهِ

Hadith — Bukhari & Muslim — Every one of you is a shepherd, and every one of you is responsible for his flock.

Root Cause 3: No Universal Brotherhood Beyond Tribe

The pre-Islamic world was defined by tribal, racial, and imperial identity. Romans were superior to barbarians. Greeks were superior to ‘others.’ The Persians divided society into rigid castes. There was no framework that declared all human beings equal in dignity before the same God.

Islam’s declaration of universal brotherhood — articulated most powerfully in the Prophet’s Farewell Sermon — was revolutionary. It did not merely preach equality; it institutionalized it in law.

يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَاكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ وَأُنثَى وَجَعَلْنَاكُمْ شُعُوبًا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوا

Al-Hujurat 49:13 — O mankind! We created you from a male and female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you might come to know each other.

Part 5: The Coming of Islam — Mercy for the World

When the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) received the first revelation in 610 CE, two world superpowers had just destroyed each other in 700 years of pointless war. The Byzantine Empire was financially ruined and militarily exhausted. The Sassanid Persian Empire was in political collapse. The rest of the world — Arabia, Africa, India, Central Asia — was fragmented into tribal and local power structures with no overarching framework of justice.

Into this vacuum came Islam — not merely as a theology, but as a complete civilization-building system.

What Islam Brought That No Previous Civilization Had in Complete Form

• A universally applicable, preserved divine text (the Quran) — unchanged and unchangeable

• A framework making rulers accountable to the same divine law as subjects

• The first international rules of warfare: no killing of civilians, women, children, the elderly; no destruction of crops or trees; no mutilation; no torture

• Abolition of blood revenge in favor of law and proportional justice

• Legal standing for women — inheritance, contracts, testimony, divorce

• The prohibition of racial and tribal superiority

• A mechanism for the liberation of slaves, unprecedented in its legal comprehensiveness

• An international community (the Ummah) that transcended all ethnic and national boundaries

 

“The rightly guided caliphs led the new Muslim armies out of Arabia at the very moment that Persia, having been defeated, and Byzantium, victorious but exhausted, could hardly defend themselves.”

— Ancient World History: Byzantine-Persian Wars

Within a single generation, the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet, may Allah be pleased with them all) — people who had themselves known the chaos of Jahiliyyah — built a civilization that stretched from the Atlantic to Central Asia, unified not by military terror but by a shared submission to One God and a shared commitment to justice.

Sayyiduna ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him), when he entered Jerusalem, walked in on foot beside his servant who was riding — setting an example of human equality that shocked the Byzantine world. He wrote the famous Covenant of ‘Umar guaranteeing the safety and religious freedom of Jerusalem’s Christians and Jews — a document that stands as one of the earliest charters of religious liberty in recorded history.

لَقَدْ أَرْسَلْنَا رُسُلَنَا بِالْبَيِّنَاتِ وَأَنزَلْنَا مَعَهُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْمِيزَانَ لِيَقُومَ النَّاسُ بِالْقِسْطِ

Al-Hadid 57:25 — We sent Our messengers with clear signs, and sent down with them the Book and the Balance, so that people might uphold justice.

Conclusion: The Answer to the Question

The answer to the sincere seeker’s question is now clear, and it has three layers:

1. No — There Has Never Been a World Without War

Recorded history provides no era of genuine global peace. The human capacity for greed, tribalism, and the lust for power — without a divinely anchored moral framework — has produced an unbroken chain of conflict across every culture, every era, and every religion in their corrupted or incomplete forms.

2. The ‘Wrong Side’ Was Every System of Unlimited Human Power

The question ‘who was on the wrong side?’ is best answered not by pointing to one people or one faith, but by identifying the structural failure: every civilization that placed no divine limit on the ruler’s authority, no universal equal dignity for all human beings, and no framework of accountability was on the wrong side of justice — regardless of the religious banner it flew. This applied to polytheistic Rome, polytheistic Assyria, and equally to corrupted Christian Byzantium.

3. Islam Came as the Answer, Not Just Another Religion

Islam did not arrive simply as ‘another faith’ to add to a marketplace of beliefs. It arrived as the completion of revelation — the final, preserved, universally applicable divine guidance — precisely at the moment when the two greatest human-made superpowers had exhausted and destroyed each other, demonstrating the total bankruptcy of power without divine moral restraint.

The mercy of Islam to the world was not merely theological. It was civilizational. It gave humanity the one thing no empire before it had possessed: a system in which every human being — regardless of race, tribe, or social status — stood equal before the same divine law, governed by the same divine accountability, and capable of the same divine nearness.

وما أرسلناك إلا رحمةً للعالمين

Al-Anbiya 21:107 — And We have not sent you except as a mercy for all the worlds.

May Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) grant us the wisdom to understand history through the lens of His revelation, and the commitment to carry that mercy forward. Ameen.

Multilingual Key Summary

The following summary is provided in the eight languages of the ForOneCreator platform:

English

Human history has never known an era of true, lasting peace. Every major civilization before Islam — whether Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, or Persian — was driven by imperial greed, unlimited power, and the absence of divine moral accountability. The ‘wrong side’ was not one people — it was every system that placed no divine limit on rulers. Islam came as a mercy and a completion: the first truly universal system of divine justice, equality, and accountability for all of humanity.

Urdu — اردو

انسانی تاریخ میں کبھی بھی حقیقی اور پائیدار امن کا دور نہیں آیا۔ اسلام سے پہلے ہر بڑی تہذیب — آشوریین، یونانی، رومی، بیزنطینی، فارسی — سامراجیانہ لالچ، بےحد طاقت، اور الہی اخلاقی ذمہ داری کے فقدان کی بنیاد پر قائم تھی۔ اسلام رحمت بن کر آیا — انسانیت کے لیے پہلا مکمل الہی نظام۔

Arabic — العربية

لم تعرف البشرية قطّ حقبة من السلام الحقيقي والدائم. كلّ حضارة كبرى قبل الإسلام — سواءٌ أكانت آشورية أم يونانية أم رومانية أم بيزنطية أم فارسية — كانت تقوم على الطمع الإمبريالي وانعدام المحاسبة الربانية. جاء الإسلام رحمةً للعالمين — أوّل نظام إلهي شامل ومحفوظ وعالمي يكفل للجميع الكرامة والمساواة أمام شريعة واحدة.

Hindi — हिन्दी

मानव इतिहास में कभी वास्तविक और स्थायी शांति का दौर नहीं आया। इस्लाम से पहले की हर बड़ी सभ्यता — अश्शूरियनी। यूनानी। रोमन। बायजेंटाइन। फारसी — साम्राज्यवादी लालच। असीमित शक्ति। और ईश्वरीय नैतिक उत्तरदायित्व की अनुपस्थिति पर आधारित थीं। इस्लाम रहमत बनकर आया — मानवजाति के लिए पहली संपूर्ण ईश्वरीय व्यवस्था।

Telugu — తెలుగు

మానవ చరిత్రలో నిజమైన శాంతి యుగం ఎన్నడూ లేదు. ఇస్లాంకు ముందు ప్రతి మహా నాగరికత — అసీరియన్స్కిబ్బందికిబ్బందికిబ్బందిక్కిదిఫిరుందు — సామ్రాజ్యవాద వ్యామోహం, అపరిమిత శక్తి, దైవ నైతిక జవాబుదారిత్వం లేకపోవడం వలన నిర్మించబడ్డాయి. ఇస్లాం దయగా వచ్చింది — మానవజాతికి మొదటి సంపూర్ణ దైవ వ్యవస్థగా.

Tamil — தமிழ்

மனித வரலாற்றில் உண்மையான அமைதியின் காலம் எதுவுமில்லை. இஸ்லாமியத்திற்கு முன்பான அனைத்து பெரிய நாகரிகமும் — அசீரியன், கிரீக்கம், ரோமம், பிஸநைண்டஸ், பாரஸீகம் — ஆக்கிரமிப்பு ஆசை, வரம்பறா અதிகாரம், ஈறைவன் નீதி முறைமை இல்லாமல் கட்டமைக்கப்பட்டன. இஸ்லாம் இரக்கமாக வந்தது — மனிதகுலத்திற்கு முதலாவது விரிவான ஈறைவன் அருளம்பு திட்டமாக.

Bengali — বাংলা

মানব ইতিহাসে কখনো প্রকৃত শান্তির যুগ আসেনি। ইসলামের আগের প্রতিটি বড় সভ্যতা — আশূরিয়ান, গ্রিক, রোমান, বাইজান্টাইন, পারসিক — সাম্রাজ্যবাদী লোভ, সীমাহীন ক্ষমতা ও ইলাহি নৈতিক দায়বদ্ধতার অনুপস্থিতির উপর প্রতিষ্ঠিত ছিল। ইসলাম রহমত হিসেবে এসেছিল — সমগ্র মানবজাতির জন্য প্রথম সম্পূর্ণ ইলাহি ব্যবস্থা।

Malayalam — മലയാളം

മാനവ ചരിത്രത്തിൽ ഒരിക്കലും യാഥാര്ത്ഥമായ സമാധാനത്തിന്റെ കാലം ഉണ്ടായിട്ടില്ല. ഇസ്ലാംക്ക് മുമ്പുള്ള എല്ലാ വലിയ നാഗരികതകളും — അസീരിയൻ, ഗ്രീക്ക്, റോമൻ, ബൈസന്റൈൻ, പെര്ഷ്യൻ — അധികാരദാഹം, അപരിമിതമായ ശക്തി, ദൈവിക ധാര്മിക ഉത്തരവാദിത്വം ഇല്ലാതെ പണിതാൻകല്ക് മേൽ ചൂഷണം നടത്തി. ഇസ്ലാം കാരുണ്യമായി വന്നു — മാനവരാശിക്ക് മുഴുവന്റെയും ഒറ്റ ദൈവിക വ്യവസ്ഥിതിയായി.

Key References

• The Holy Quran — Al-Anbiya 21:107; Ar-Rum 30:41; Al-Isra 17:16; Al-Hadid 57:25; Al-Hujurat 49:13

• Tafheem ul-Quran — Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi (commentary on Surah Ar-Rum and Al-Anbiya)

• Tafsir Ibn Kathir — on Sunnatullah and the rise and fall of nations

• Sangaralingam Ramesh, ‘War and Conflict: The Last 5000 Years of Human History’, Oxford/Springer 2025

• Heritage History: The Roman-Persian Wars

• HistoryNet: The History of the Roman-Persian Wars

• Ancient World History: Byzantine-Persian Wars

• Britannica: List of Wars, Historical Conflicts from the Trojan War to Present

• Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

• New World Encyclopedia: History of War

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