Peace and justice has a lot of different meaning to different people. Some people define peace as a way to avoid negation or in common synonym harmony and tranquility while justice is the conformity to truth and reality in expressing opinions and in conduct. Two simple words but they carry out so much within them. These two words may seem different but they complement each other when said in one. Like people in different faith traditions, these people have different believes and different traditions but they’re perspective of peace and justice complement each other. They may not be the same but they are equally connected to each other. Like Martin Luther King, Martin a Baptist now referred to as human right icon of today. In his history of fighting for peace and justice he came across a lot of hardships, problems and has endured more than anything you could imagine. He always believed in the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi that there should be non-violence. And that everyone should live simple and should not try to look at the material things but only look to God. He would always implement peace and justice but no one listen they would always think of it as non sense, but in one of King’s speeches called “I Have a dream” everyone’s eyes opened to consciousness about civil rights. Dr. King’s vision of justice included men, women, sanitation workers, and union members. He knew that if their concerns were met they would together create a broad-based movement that would endure. He spoke up in favor of women's rights and saw economic justice as an issue inextricably tied to world peace. He asserted that, "no individual nation can live alone, the world is a neighborhood'" and that, "we are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality." So with this legacy, our charge is to push the limits and create new spaces in our agenda, ensure cross-participation and listen for voices yet unheard. Luckily, we have an example before us. In one of his speeches during his acceptance of the Nobel Prize of peace he said that, “There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available...In our struggle for equality we were confronted with the reality that many millions of people were essentially ignorant of our conditions or refused to face unpleasant truths. The hard-core bigot was merely one of our adversaries. The millions who were blind to our plight had to be compelled to face the social evil their indifference permitted to flourish...We knew that there were solutions and that the majority of the nation were ready for them. Yet we also knew that the existence of solutions would not automatically operate to alter conditions. We had to organize, not only arguments, but people in the millions for action. Finally we had to be prepared to accept all the consequences involved in dramatizing our grievances in the unique style we had devised." Another great advocator of peace and justice is Mohammed, Mohammed a Muslim and believe in the way of the Islam. As a recognized expert on conflict resolution, dialogue, peace building and development, Dr. Mohammed has worked for over a decade on Arab-Israeli dialogue and peace building efforts, the application of conflict resolution models in Muslim communities; inter-religious conflict resolution training; interfaith dialogue; and evaluation of conflict resolution programs. As a practitioner, he has been intervening and conducting over a hundred training workshops and courses all over the world on themes of conflict resolution; community development, peace building, reconciliation and development, training for trainers; interfaith and interethnic dialogue; culture, religion, intercultural training; conflict resolution and human rights in relief and development projects, and problem-solving workshops in such conflict zones as Sri Lanka, Mindanao- Philippines, Palestine, Israel, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, and Guatemala, as well as other areas including Egypt and the United States. As many advocators of peace and justice he believed that one should live in non violence so that we would have peace and justice. Mohammed viewed peace as a part of justice, as justice must be considered one of the indispensable prerequisites of any lasting peace. He viewed peace as a objective, an objective to share ones religion, traditions and believes and justice as a maintenance of both natural and social order. “Peace between countries must rest on the solid foundation of love between individuals.” - Mahatma Gandhi. This is a famous line from a famous man who gave peace and justice in his home country and to other countries around the world. Mahatma Gandhi a Hindu has always implemented that people should live with no violence. Gandhi a man who was awarded the Nobel peace prize always give his heart in trying to advocate peace and justice to everyone. In his quest for peace in his home town India, he gave everything he could just to share to his people how to live in non-violence and how they should live life. He would always give his everything in trying to persuade his people to live peacefully so that they would have peace and justice in their country. He would campaign every chance he could get to try to share his teachings. During world war one the British people would always arrest and imprison the Indians. The Indians would always fight but they would always lose to the British so they all end up dying or suffering in prison. Gandhi would always want to use a different approach and use non violence to try to give peace to the country. Gandhi thought his men were behind him but no. His men abandoned him and before his death he pleaded for the independence of his country and to stop making nuclear weapons, because violence will just make things worse. Gandhi’s perspective of peace and justice is that people should find inner peace and justice on their own first before we can have peace and justice in a country. As to everything I have learned making this paper, I think that peace and justice can only be found when we apply non violence. Violence is never a key to peace but a weapon for war. I always thought that using violence would solve everything, because if one would lose the other would be victorious so they would have peace, because the loser would not have anything to fight with. But I realized we can never use this, because in that deep heart of the loser is revenge that will end up as a war again afterwards. Everything these people fought for gave me the idea that these people were always right and people who say they know what peace and justice were wrong. Today, we still use violence as a key for peace, but I can see that we have improved a lot and we don’t use violence that much anymore. We know use peace talks and negotiations as a part of our non violence in pursue of peace. I can advocate peace and justice today by first understanding what peace and justice really is. Knowing and understanding this would allow me to be an instrument of peace and justice to my family friends and enemies. I can further explain to them that peace should not only be in group but should be in you first.
References:
http://new.gbgm-umc.org/missionstudies/interfaith/faith-traditions/ http://www.ask.com/bar?q=martin+luther+king+perspective+on+peace+and+justice&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=9&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rhrealitycheck.org%2Fblog%2F2007%2F01%2F15%2Frev-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-a-legacy-of-social-justice http://www.salaminstitute.org/Profiles/abunimer.htm http://www.irfi.org/articles2/articles_3101_3150/peace%20and%20justice%20in%20islamhtml.htm http://www.johndear.org/pdfs/mahatmagandhiapostleofnonviolence.pdf