The Importance of an Intellectual Audience

The Importance of an Intellectual Audience O ne important aspect of the Quran is that it is a record of the Prophet’s mission. What course of action did the Prophet follow? And how did the previous prophets proceed? According to the Quranic account, all of the prophets invariably addressed the intelligentsia of their time. Their first target was the people of intellect. For this reason we see that when the Quran refers to the response of the contemporary peoples, it always mentions the intellectuals and not the common people. For example, in a verse in the chapter Al-A‘raf (The Heights), the Quran says: But the leading men of his people said, ‘Truly, we see that you are obviously lost in error!’ (7:60) Why did the prophets opt for this method? The reason is that the intelligentsia is comprised of the representatives of a society. This method is very important and for very wellknown reasons. The first reason is that the method of the dawah mission, or conveying the message of God to people, is vertical rather than horizontal in nature. You can reach down from the intelligentsia to the common people, but if you try to reach up from the common people to the intelligentsia, it will be of no avail. This will produce no significant result. It is a law of nature that a mission always percolates down from the intelligentsia to the common people: it is always the intelligentsia who influence other people and not vice versa. The Prophet of Islam also followed this pattern. At that time Makkah was the centre of Arabian leadership. The Prophet gave his message to the leaders of Makkah, who were also the leaders of