It had all started with a dream. Prophet Mohammad had already spent six years in Medina, having migrated there due to extreme persecution in his native city of Mecca. He dreamt that he was entering the gates of Mecca peacefully, without any bloodshed, something no Muslim conscious of the unremitting hostility of the Meccans could believe. But the Prophet took this as a sign from God. He immediately prepared to make an Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca which, unlike Hajj, can be made at any time. About 1,500 of his followers accompanied him. The Meccans sent theircavalry to stop him, but he had changed his route and camped at an oasis called Hudaibiya. Then he sent Hazrat Usman as an emissary to Mecca. The Meccans sent several emissaries including one Urwah ibn Masud who was ill-mannered enough to touch and pick at the Prophet's beard while talking to him.

The Prophet refused to be provoked. He simply insisted on a negotiated and peaceful entry into the holy city. Finally a truce was signed on terms that most Muslims considered humiliating. The Prophet and his companions had to go back without performing Umrah, though they could come back next year. Any defector from Mecca had to be returned. And so on. It was only the Prophet's charisma that carried the day. The Muslims were just not prepared to `surrender' before their enemies, whom they had defeated in several wars before.

That this `surrender' at Hudaibiya turned out for the good of Islam became clear only in a few months, and came to be regarded as a masterstroke of statesmanship. But when the treaty wassigned not one Muslim was happy. The Prophet had, however, insisted that peace was infinitely better than war. He had said that concepts like `surrender' and `humiliation' were meaningless, emanating as they did from our negative egos. He had showed how far Muslims should go in trying to follow the Quranic precept that saving one life amounted to saving all of humanity and killing one person amounted to murdering the entire human race. Muslims had, of course, been allowed before to fight in defence, but only when their very survival was at stake.

What does a Muslim learn from Hudaibiya? How does he react today to the Ayodhya dispute, particularly after the very object of dispute, the Babri Masjid, has already been demolished and converted into a temple? The only realistic question that remains is: should Muslims allow the makeshift building there to be converted into a proper temple and thus defuse the tension or continue to fight over the memories of a mosque and plunge the country into what could wellturn out to be a small civil war? The last standoff had cost the nation, particularly Muslims, several thousand lives, despite the Nehruvian `secular order' in which some self-styled Muslim leaders retain a touching faith. For them any suggestion to sacrifice land for peace amounts to `surrender to blackmail'. But peace always entails some sacrifice, particularly on the part of the spiritually evolved.

Evil cannot defeat evil. Only goodness can. Let us forgive and forget in the interest of peace. This will not be surrender. This will amount to posing a spiritual tradition. Let us follow the Prophet. He had not surrendered to blackmail at Hudaibiya. He had struck a blow for peace. He had saved lives. He had generated hope. Fear breeds more fear: negativity even more negativity. Hope alone can conquer fear.