The Significance of Calling People to Tread the Path of God

 “Thus We have made you a middle nation, so that you may act as witnesses for mankind, and the messenger may be a witness for you.” (2:143/22:78) On the Day of Judgement when all human beings are gathered in the Divine Court, these people (da‘is) will be brought as witnesses before those to whom they had conveyed the divine message. This is expressed thus in the Bible: Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us former things? Let them bring out their witnesses, that they may be justified; or let them hear and say, “It is truth.” “You are my witnesses,” says the Lord, “and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me.” (Isaiah, 43:9-10) The Prophet was so deeply involved in his responsibility as a witness to the Truth that God had to say: “It may be that you will destroy yourself with grief because they will not believe.” (26:3). Similarly, if Muslims were to become conscious of the fact that, after the Prophet, it is they who have been ordained to work in his stead, they would, with this realisation, be unable to sleep soundly at night or to rest properly during the day. For a duty of this nature implies that either they fulfil it, in which case they must bear witness to the Truth before all the nations of the world, or be apprehended as defaulters by God on the charge of having failed to inform people of what they will have to face in the next, eternal life. It would be correct to assume that if Muslims do not proclaim the Truth that God intended for the good of mankind, they definitely incur the risk of having the Quranic decree—such as was applied to the previous keepers of the divine books—applied likewise to them. As the Quran states: Those who conceal the evidence of the truth and the guidance We have revealed, after We have made them clear to people in the Scripture, will be rejected by God and so do others. But from those Calling People to Tread the Path of God