The Making of a Phrase: How Islam Came to Be Called a “Religion of Peace”

Peace dove statue

Togo, Africa

Few phrases in contemporary political discourse are repeated as frequently—and as reflexively—as the assertion that Islam is a “religion of peace.” It has become one of the most familiar clichés of our time. Yet what is striking is not merely the popularity of the phrase, but its relatively recent origin. For most of Islamic history, and indeed for most of the history of the world’s religions, no faith tradition was habitually described in such sweeping moral terms.

In the medieval and early modern periods, religions were rarely characterised through universal ethical slogans. Christianity was not commonly described as the “religion of love,” nor was Buddhism universally labelled the “religion of peace,” despite its association with nonviolence. Religions were understood primarily as civilizational frameworks—systems of law, ritual, and moral order embedded within societies. The idea of branding a faith through a single normative phrase emerged much later, largely in the twentieth century.

The description of Islam as a “religion of peace” gained prominence during the political ferment of the 1920s in colonial India. At the time, Indian leaders and intellectuals were engaged in the difficult task of forging a unified anti-colonial movement across religious communities. In this context, emphasizing the peaceful character of each faith served a political purpose: it helped create a language of intercommunal harmony in a society deeply divided along religious lines.

Mahatma Gandhi articulated this sentiment in a 1927 essay published in Young India, writing: “I do regard Islam to be a religion of peace in the same sense as Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are.” Gandhi’s statement did not claim that Islam alone embodied peace; rather, it placed Islam alongside other religions as part of a shared ethical tradition.

Around the same period, the historian Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi published a book titled The Religion of Peace (1930). Its opening lines declared: “Islam is a religion of peace. Peace cannot exist without goodwill and toleration.” Works such as this helped institutionalize the phrase in certain intellectual and political circles of the time.

However, the expression did not immediately gain wide international currency. In the West, discussions about Islam were shaped more by colonial scholarship and geopolitical considerations than by moral slogans. Meanwhile, the violent partition of India in 1947—accompanied by immense communal bloodshed—deeply unsettled the earlier language of religious harmony within the subcontinent.

The phrase began to reappear more prominently in the late twentieth century, though in a different geopolitical environment. During the 1970s, oil-rich states in the Middle East expanded their cultural and religious outreach globally. Through funding institutions, publishing houses, and religious organizations, they supported efforts that framed Islam in universalistic terms, including the recurring emphasis on Islam as a “religion of peace.”

In the decades that followed, the phrase gradually entered broader political discourse. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Western political leaders, journalists, and intellectuals frequently invoked it in public debates. Their intention was largely political and social: to distinguish the actions of extremist groups from the beliefs of the broader Muslim population and to prevent the stigmatization of Muslim communities in democratic societies.

From that point onward, the expression circulated widely across global media and academic discourse. In many countries—including India—it became a familiar rhetorical device, often repeated without much reflection on its historical origins.

Yet the history of this phrase reveals something important about modern political language. Religious traditions, like civilizations themselves, are vast, internally diverse, and historically complex. Attempting to compress them into simple moral labels—whether positive or negative—rarely captures their full reality.

“Civilizations are not slogans,” as one might put it. “They are living histories—contradictory, evolving, and deeply human.”

The widespread use of the phrase “religion of peace” therefore tells us as much about twentieth-century political anxieties and aspirations as it does about religion itself. It reflects the modern world’s search for simplified moral narratives in an age of ideological conflict.

Understanding that history does not resolve contemporary debates about religion and violence. But it does remind us that the language we use to describe civilizations often emerges not from timeless truths, but from the political circumstances of particular historical moments.