honoring genuine human rights

Peace is the essential core of all religions, and peacemaking is a telos for which all religions offer guidance. Grounded in principles such as justice, rational and social growth, forbearance, and forgiveness, peace—within the Radawi culture—is counted among the most foundational principles of international relations. The creation of peace is, before anything else, a spiritual act rooted in the honoring of genuine human rights. Unlike the negative definition adopted in much international-legal discourse—i.e., peace as nothing but the absence of war—the Radawi culture treats peace as an affirmative concept: amicable coexistence premised on the preservation of human dignity. This descriptive-analytical study argues that, contrary to the ethnocentric and unrealistic claims of certain Western Orientalists such as Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington—who portray Islam as incompatible with peace and democracy and as a font of violence and terrorism—Islam is a bearer of peace and friendship, and it is capacious enough to furnish a new and comprehensive paradigm for international relations. In the Radawi culture, the scope of peace embraces not only the narrow sense (the absence of armed conflict) but also the broader sense (justice-centered social flourishing). In this culture—contrary to what is commonly asserted in the law of armed conflict—there is no doctrine of preemptive self-defense; peace is sacred, and jihād is a fundamentally humanitarian measure meant to expand peace and security under divine sovereignty by negating ṭāghūt (illegitimate domination), defending the oppressed, and combating injustice.