War & Peace Quote by Pervez Musharraf

A line like this lands less as theology than as statecraft: it’s an attempt to seize the narrative of Islam from both Islamist hardliners and Islamophobic pundits by defining the faith in the most diplomatically legible terms possible. Musharraf’s method is blunt but effective: a series of binary contrasts that read like a press briefing meant to travel well across borders. “Tolerance, not hatred,” “brotherhood, not enmity,” “peace, and not violence” isn’t argument; it’s a reframing device, designed to be repeated until it becomes the default lens.

The subtext is inseparable from Musharraf’s biography. As Pakistan’s military ruler after 1999, and as a key U.S. ally after 9/11, he had to sell two audiences on two different fears: Western governments anxious about “Islamic extremism,” and domestic constituencies wary of foreign pressure and internal crackdowns. Casting Islam as inherently peaceful gives moral cover for a security agenda that targeted militants while insisting that the state wasn’t waging war on religion. It also positions him as the reasonable middleman: the leader who can translate Islam into liberal-friendly vocabulary without conceding the faith’s authority.

The rhetoric’s strength is also its vulnerability. By insisting on a purified “true Islam,” Musharraf sidesteps the messier reality that religious identity is contested, politicized, and sometimes weaponized. That simplicity is the point: in moments when reputations and alliances hinge on a sentence, ambiguity is a luxury a statesman can’t afford.