JANUARY 22 Intellectual Development

Then comes da‘wah, that is, the call to Islam. According to the Qur’an, da‘wah is the great jihad. Why is da‘wah the great jihad, or great struggle? Because it is a universal mission. It is a most serious task. It engages one’s entire capacities throughout one’s whole life. Every time one is faced with intellectual challenges, one is bound to give a strong response. Thus, da‘wah becomes an extensive course of action through which one’s personality develops day by day, until one reaches the highest level of intellectual and spiritual development. Iman (faith) and da‘wah are two basic levels of Islam. If iman is a superior ideology, da‘wah is a superior course of action. Iman purifies one’s mind and soul, while da‘wah imbues one’s personality with a sublime probity. One who adopts Islam as a universal mission, in both the ideological and practical sense, is morally activated to the maximum possible extent and this course, slowly but surely, leads him to reach the highest pinnacle of humanity. Stating the relationship between man and true religion the Qur’an says: So you set your face towards the true faith uprightly, the upright nature with which God has endowed man, and let there be no alteration in God’s Creation. That is the right religion, although most men may not know it. (30:30) This means that every human being is created by God to be capable—as a matter of his natural constitution—of accepting the religion of truth. The Unity of God is a truth, arrived at intuitively, and is plain to every man of common sense, unless he perverts himself by the different prejudices which he receives from his environment. Islam is thus the natural religion that a child left to itself would develop. A western writer, Lady Cobbold, has rightly described it in these words: Islam is the religion of common sense. When this potential is realized, it results in the emergence of a new man. What kind of character is possessed by this new man is made clear by the following hadith: Nine things the Lord has commanded me: Fear of God in private and in public; Justness, whether in anger or in calmness; Moderation in both poverty and affluence;