The Meaning of Islam: Submission, Not Peace
As a Muslim, I consider myself to be particularly devout. I believe that faith, or religion, is the greatest achievement of mankind. The thought process that led to the discovery or invention of religion still underpins human society today. In my view, science itself is an ancillary spinoff of the idea of religion.
Being alive in this day and age, when the culture clash between the West and the Muslim world is in full swing, I have heard it all. I have seen it all. So has everyone else.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the Muslim identity became radioactive, and every Muslim who did not want to be ostracized had to overcompensate on the defensive. It was in the fallout of that event that a trend began among Muslims, branding Islam as the religion of peace. They tell anyone who cares to listen that the Arabic word “Islam” itself means “peace.”
Alas, that is not true. The word “Islam” does NOT mean “peace.” I remember vividly from primary school Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK) class in the 90s, before the events of 9/11, we were taught that Islam means “total submission to the will of Allah.” That was the definition we were taught in class, verbatim. If you have to translate the word “Islam” to a single-word English analogue, what you get is “submission.” So, Islam actually means submission, not peace.
Yet again, Islam, meaning submission, has both syntactic and morphological connections to the Arabic word for “peace,” which is “salaam.” Salaam, therefore, is indeed the root word of “islaam.” So, what does being a Muslim imply if the word Islam means submission? First and foremost, it means total submission to Allah. To the will of Allah. You have to surrender your affairs; you have to subordinate your intellect to the dictates of Allah.
I’ve heard many, oh so many Muslims with an agenda parroting the “Islam means peace” propaganda, and it’s sometimes so nauseating—not because if Islam did not mean peace, then it has to mean the opposite of peace—but because of how misleading it is. It means we are so insecure and unsure of our own philosophical confession we need a cosmetic spin to be able to sell it. Such disingenuous sleights of hand ultimately do more harm than good.
I mean, I do realize how it all sounds if you tell a non-Muslim who has a pre-existing aversion or prejudice for Islam, that “Islam” means “submission.” A derivative of subjugation. If you let it hang in the air for a moment without context as a non-Muslim, you will feel how self-evidently disgusting that is. It means Islam is anti-freedom… and freedom happens to be the (false) cover charge of Western Civilization.
And the chickens did come home to roost. I’ve heard many anti-Muslim voices using this as an attack angle. We had always been lying to them, we are taught to lie and deceive non-Muslims, and that’s exactly what we were doing. We lull them into a false sense of security by telling them that our very essence means peace when we are secretly plotting their subjugation. We are initiates in a death cult that submits to a demon god and will not rest until all freedom is extinguished. A religion of peace indeed.
But why does “submission” sound so terrible? Well, it doesn’t. As already mentioned, in my opinion, religion is the most impactful discovery of mankind.
When man first looked up at the heavens in abject helplessness, the idea of God became apparent. Man was fighting a losing battle against both nature and his own incipient consciousness. God became apparent because you have no control or power but He does. If I were to imagine myself alive in Neolithic Mesopotamia, I can see how it would be so easy, so scientific indeed to let go, to submit to a light which, according to a Christian gospel song, “that is leading me… to the place where I’ll find peace again.” It was easy to accept this unseen force, which according to the same Christian song, that “calmed the storms and gave me rest.”
You have no power but this force is all-powerful. You stop fighting and you resign, you surrender. You submit. And you find peace. Just like Muslims do. Islam is a religion of peace because it calms the tempest in the restless souls of its adherents… and gives them peace! A religion of peace indeed.
And as man navigated this helplessness and became able to narrow the pool and pull of the unknown, control or foretell natural phenomena, he became less reliant on God to the extent that the idea of blank and blind submission to an unseen being became disgusting.
What man asked of or needed from his God he now had the power to dispose. Today, he does not have to fear being enslaved by raiders, he does not have to fear the vagaries of wilderness, he does not even have to fear to a significant extent wars, earthquakes, floods, and volcanic explosions. To a convenient extent, he can foretell them and prepare for them. He does not have to fear unexplained and unmanageable health challenges. He found peace. What he asked from his God, he could now create or control… through science. All he relied on faith and religion for, he now relied on science… the spinoff of religion.
But still, Einstein had to submit to the cosmic constant. Science is itself a hodgepodge of immaterial and sometimes anecdotal conjectures. We have to submit to the idea of gravity, electromagnetism, weak and nuclear forces even though we have absolutely no idea how they all converge to produce the effects we observe but cannot rationally explain. We submitted to the Covid lockdowns and other unpalatable restrictions. I have to submit to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria or I’m liable for treason. In return for peace, I have to submit to the laws of the land, to the facts of reality.
This is the peace Islam offers through submission. The same peace we are offered by about every other fact of reality and we gladly oblige given the stakes. And that is what makes Islam a religion of peace even though it does NOT mean peace.
