It’s strange that the narrative of eternal peace among nations is still pushed by the United Nations. It’s as if people believe that nation-states are not subject to the laws of nature; that they do not grow old and die like the individuals that comprise them.

The idea of working towards universal peace is rooted in a Christian doctrine inspired by Bible verses like Isaiah 11:6:

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion
and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”

The verse goes on to describe “lions eating straw” like cattle. This is part of the inspiration for some Christian and Jews who believe in a thousand year long messianic age, characterized by peace and prosperity. This is the origin of the term “millenarianism.” A related Christian scriptural interpretation which implies a similar negation of the laws of nature is an American invention called “the rapture,” which holds that it’s possible to enter paradise without actually dying. Praise be to Allah, who revealed to us the truth:

كُلُّ نَفۡسࣲ ذَاۤىِٕقَةُ ٱلۡمَوۡتِۗ

“Every soul will taste death.”

[3:185]

There was never even consensus among Christians and Jews on the coming of the “kingdom of God on earth,” because the prophecies are difficult to interpret, but millenarian ideas have had a huge influence on the trajectory of Western civilization. Post-millenarians believe that a golden age of peace will occur before ‘Isa, alaihi asalam, returns to earth. Pre-millenarians, on the other hand, believe that the prophesied golden age will occur after the second coming.

George Bush Jr., for example, could be described as a post-millennarian. In his view, the war against Islam was an apocalyptic struggle between good and evil in which America would bring about an era of peace and prosperity before the return of ‘Isa, alaihi asalam. US President Woodrow Wilson also held similar views, and this is part of what influenced him to push for the formation of the League of Nations, which eventually became the United Nations.

By contrast, pre-millenarians believe that it is only after the return of ‘Isa, alaihi asalam, that this period of peace and prosperity can arrive, so post-millenarians like Bush are more likely to try to bring about the era of peace by their own efforts. This kind of thinking was one of the driving forces behind “democratic peace theory” which is one of the most common justifications for American imperialism. The theory states that no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other, so theoretically, if the whole world was ruled by democracy there would be no more war.

Marxism can also be seen as a vision of a post-millennial utopia achieved through the abolition of classes and private property.
Likewise, Nazi ideology proposed to bring about utopia by engineering a master race imbued with all desirable human qualities.
All of these ideologies have in common a rejection of the command of Allah, and a desire to make a “better world” on the basis of human power and ideas, rather than accepting the creation of Allah as it is.

It’s possible to see analogues of this kind of thinking in other human relations with nature. One example is attempts to eradicate forest fires, and another is the elimination of predators like wolves and lions. In the case of forest fires, suppressing naturally occurring fires leads to a buildup of dry, dead wood. With each year that passes without a fire, the risk of a devastating and uncontrollable blaze increases. When an artificially suppressed fire finally does occur, it is far worse than what would occur naturally if forest fires were accepted as a natural part of the forest’s life cycle.

Likewise, the outright rejection of predators killing livestock and the total elimination of predators disturbs the balance of ecosystems, leading to an excess of grazing animals, damaging plant life and causing erosion. In both of these cases, a desire to prevent some specific harm inherent in nature eventually leads to a greater generalized harm.

While the kuffar are willing to recognize their mistakes in ecology, they have great difficulty accepting that these same rules apply to humans and human societies. This is partly because they are following their desires, but they have also lost the conceptual division between the human and the divine, and as such, they strive to achieve divine power and immortality through technology and the manipulation of nature. This is the main force driving the popularity of democratic peace theory.

The theory is simple enough to debunk for the one who is willing to use reason. Democracy is not viable for all of humanity, because it is highly resource intensive. This higher consumption rate relative to authoritarian systems is due to the amount of surplus resources required to educate a political class and enable them to engage in slow, complex and elaborate democratic political processes.

In Athens, the original democracy, this process depended on support from a huge, politically marginalized slave class. When Europe went into an extended period of relative resource scarcity after the fall of the Roman empire, democratic structures largely disappeared and did not reappear in the West until the advent of colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

This is why trying to build democratic governments in places like Afghanistan or Somalia is the height of stupidity. It’s like planting a swamp tree in the desert— these governments are unequivocally doomed.

This rejection of nature is not desirable in any way— rather, those who reject the natural order are following false promises from Satan. A perpetual state of peace and prosperity leads to stagnation and weakness. Humans, deprived of hunger and difficulty, become soft and complacent, and bereft of meaning and purpose.

An absence of lions leads to degradation of the breeding stock of gazelles, as it is no longer only the strongest and healthiest that
reproduce. Forests without fires are dominated by large trees which prevent light from reaching the forest floor, leading to a decline in biodiversity and a general decay of the forest ecosystem.

More importantly, when this logic is applied to the human condition, it diverts people from the remembrance of Allah. With no hardship or difficulty, people have no reason to cry out to Allah and ask for His help. The Prophet ﷺ said:

سَلُوا اللَّهَ مِنْ فَضْلِهِ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ يُحِبُّ أَنْ يُسْأَلَ وَأَفْضَلُ الْعِبَادَةِ انْتِظَارُ الْفَرَجِ

“Ask Allah for His favor. Verily, Allah Almighty loves to be asked and among the best acts of worship is to wait in expectation
of relief.”

[Sunan at Tirmidhi, 3571]

And he ﷺ said that the majority of the inhabitants of jannah are poor.

The presence of poverty is a test by which some may excel and draw nearer to their Lord, and part of the purpose of our existence. Trying to eliminate the hardship with which Allah promises to test us is nothing less than rejecting the true purpose of our lives and the bounty of our Lord, subhanahu wa t’ala.

So with this “improving” the kuffar are doing, they are really corrupting the earth spiritually and materially in every way, and this is an apparent example of the same phenomena mention in the ayah:

وَإِذَا قِیلَ لَهُمۡ لَا تُفۡسِدُوا۟ فِی ٱلۡأَرۡضِ قَالُوۤا۟ إِنَّمَا نَحۡنُ مُصۡلِحُونَ

And when they are told, “Do not spread corruption on
earth,” they answer, “We are but improving things!”

[2:11]