FEBRUARY 12 The Master Key

FEBRUARY 12 The Master Key An article in an Arabic magazine headlined Al-Miftahul Azim (Master Key), citing da‘wah power as the greatest of all Islamic strengths, says that if in the past, Islam achieved its universal victories through da‘wah, today, it can turn its defeats into victories by the same method. Da‘wah is very much under discussion these days among Muslim writers and speakers. Its exponents, however, spend more time unraveling the plots and conspiracies hatched against them by non-Muslim nations than in practising what they preach. That is to say that, on the one hand, they exhort Muslims to assume the role of da‘is while, on the other hand, they assure them with great vehemence that as far as the Muslims are concerned, all the nations of the world have turned into rapacious wolves and, as such, must be fought against and annihilated. Both these utterances are made in the same breath, without any awareness of their contradictory nature, the one spelling peace and the other spelling war. And who are these nations who, day in and day out, are labelled oppressors and conspirators? They are those very non-Muslim nations who are the potential recipients of da‘wah. They are our mad‘us. The Muslims are the da‘is and their neighbouring nations are the mad‘us. Now, when da‘is are constantly having it dinned into them that the mad‘u is a cruel predator, there can be no arousal of any sincere missionary spirit as described in the Qur’an: the da‘i is truly a wellwisher of his mad‘u. Da‘wah is wholly an experience of love. The da‘i must be fully committed to guiding his mad‘u. Only then can the process of da‘wah be meaningful. The da‘is must ignore the antagonism and combativeness of the mad‘u; he must erase all adverse impressions of the mad‘u from his heart, so that he may spontaneously begin praying for the mad‘u’s guidance. People talk of da‘wah without ever realizing its prerequisites. They want the credit for being da‘is without ever fulfilling its demands. They want the credit for communicating the divine message to man without paying the price for it. This is true not only of the weak Muslim minority in non-Muslim countries, but also of the Muslim majority living in Muslim countries. The only difference