EVER since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the Middle East, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith — even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. Recent terrorist atrocities have seemed to confirm this received idea. But if we want a peaceful world, we urgently need a more balanced view. We cannot hope to win the “battle for hearts and minds” unless we know what is actually in them. Nor can we expect Muslims to be impressed by our liberal values if they see us succumbing unquestioningly to a medieval prejudice born in a time of extreme Christian belligerence.

Like Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Sikhs and secularists, some Muslims have undoubtedly been violent and intolerant, but the new exhibition at the British Museum in London — Haj: Journey to the Heart of Islam — is a timely reminder that this is not the whole story.

The Haj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Makkah, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith. Equating religion with “belief” is a modern western aberration. Like swimming or driving, religious knowledge is practically acquired. You learn only by doing. The ancient rituals of the Haj, which Arabs performed for centuries before Islam, have helped pilgrims to form habits of heart and mind that — pace the western stereotype — are non-violent and inclusive.

In Makkah, violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home, pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons, to swat an insect or speak an angry word, a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living. At a climactic moment of his prophetic career, the Holy Prophet (PBUH) drew on this tradition. Because of persecution in Makkah, the Prophet (pbuh) and the Muslim community (the umma) had migrated to Madina, 400km to the north. Makkah was determined to destroy the umma and a bitter conflict ensued. But eventually the Prophet (pbuh) broke the deadly cycle of warfare with a courageous non-violent initiative.

In March 628, to general astonishment, he announced that he was going to make the Haj. This meant that he had to ride unarmed into enemy territory, yet 1,000 Muslims accompanied him. The pilgrim party narrowly escaped being massacred by the Makkan cavalry, and eventually entered the sacred territory of Makkah, where they simply sat down beside their camels and refused to move.

Knowing that they would lose all credibility if they slaughtered pilgrims on this holy ground, the Makkans negotiated a truce and their rivals accepted conditions that filled the Muslims with dismay. But the holy Quran proclaimed that this apparent defeat was a “clear triumph” because, like Jews and Christians, the Muslims had acted in a spirit of peace, self-restraint and forbearance. Two years later, hostilities ceased and the Makkans voluntarily opened their gates to the Holy Prophet (pbuh).

Clearly the Quran did not despise Jews and Christians; this affinity with “the people of the book” was also central to the Muslim faith. The Arabs firmly believed that they, too, were children of Abraham, because they were the descendants of his eldest son Ismail — a regional view shared by the Bible.

It was said that Abraham and Ismail had rebuilt the holy Kaabah when it had fallen into disrepair, had dedicated it to their God, and then performed the rites of the Haj. Many Arabs thought that Allah was the God worshipped by the people of the book, and Christian Arabs used to make the Haj alongside the pagans. The Arabs had no conception of an exclusive religious tradition, so they were deeply shocked when they discovered that most Jews and Christians refused to consider them as part of the Abrahamic family. The Quran still urged Muslims to respect the people of the book and revere their prophets, but decreed that instead of facing Jerusalem when they prayed, as hitherto, they should turn towards the Kabah built by Abraham.

Like Abraham, who had not belonged to a closed-off cult, they would take no pride in an established institution and, as Abraham had done, focus on the worship of God alone. Hence the Haj is all about the Abrahamic family — not the Prophet (PBUH) himself.

Alas, all traditions lose their primal purity and we all fail our founders. But the British Museum’s beautiful presentation of the Haj can help us understand how the vast majority of the world’s Muslims understand their faith.

Socrates, founder of the western rational tradition, insisted that the exercise of reason required us constantly and stringently to question received ideas and entrenched certainties. The new exhibition can indeed become a journey to the heart of Islam and also, perhaps, to a more authentic and respectful western rational identity.—By arrangement with the Guardian

(Karen Armstrong is the author of Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time, and a trustee of the British Museum)