Discovery of Islam

The mission continues through the Ummah, as a matter of religious duty. It would be no exaggeration to say that without the performance of this duty, its very credibility of being the Muslim Ummah would become doubtful. Strangely, indeed, da’wah found no place in the literature of the centuries after the Prophet. Neither has it been mentioned anywhere in the Muslim agenda of today. The classical commentaries of the Quran (Tafsir) also fail to give any prominence to dawah as a concept. In books of hadith too, we find chapters on all subjects except dawah. The same is true of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) in whose texts we do not find a chapter on dawah. According to the Quran, the exercise of patience (sabr) is a deed which makes man eligible for the highest reward (8:46); the patient man will be rewarded “beyond measure” (39:10). But the interpretation that gained popularity in later times was that the injunction of sabr, patience, had been abrogated and replaced by jihad (in the sense of qital, fighting). Thus, one who studies these books, gathers the impression, that consciously or unconsciously, patience might have been important in the past, but that nowadays it has lost its relevance. Now jihad (in the sense of qital) and not sabr is of the foremost importance. It follows that whenever a reformer calls Muslims back to their duties concerning da’wah and sabr, they become antagonistic to such a call, because they have become conditioned to finding it alien to their thinking. The Obsession with Historical Glory As mentioned above, one of the major reasons for the original Islam becoming an alien religion among the