Stop talking about world peace if you really want a better world (putting a naysayer in the text)

"He thinks it's not kosher"

     "World peace" sounds like a beautiful thing, doesn't it? Imagine all humankind living and working together to ensure that differences are respected, and that the benefits from such a global cooperation are fairly distributed among the denizens of the world. But that's just looking at it from one's own cultural perspective. The image of all peoples holding hands and singing "We Are the World" translates much more into an ideal of a world united under my civilizational values than any real alternative to make the world a less bloody place. For many a Muslim, world peace certainly means worldwide submission to Allah; matter of fact, that's the core value underlying Islam (the word itself means "submission"), the so-called religion of peace.

     Now, a conscientious fellow human having read this last sentence might raise his or her brow and think: "Wait a minute, I know where this guy is going. He’s probably just another one of those Islamophobic warmongers supporting the extinction of anything that is not Western, capitalistic and supposedly modern. Or maybe even worse!" Quite the contrary. What I’m trying to say here is that, even if you are a strong adherent (as I myself am!) of such dear values as the invaluable nature of life, human rights, liberty and respect to each other’s differences and equality under the rule of law, that doesn’t mean you’re more right (or "righter"?)– least of all more righteous – than those who don’t share the same values. Nor does it mean that differently-minded people (ah, the Gentiles!) will harken to these sacred commandments. In actuality, the key to understanding others and having a realistic problem-solving approach about the ever-rampant violence in our world is, first of all, recognizing our own political stances in relation to those who think differently, which is historically constructed and not derivative of an ethereal order of Truth and Goodness. As a consequence, any Utopia of a world free of conflicts is but an ethnocentric construct in which somebody's version of world peace has won.​