Witness to Truth

The Essence of Religion Mu‘adh ibn Jabal to Yemen to call people to Islam, he told Mu‘adh that he would meet a number of people of the Book, and that he should first explain to them the article of faith i.e., the concept of the oneness of God, and when they had accepted this, then he should gradually teach them how to say prayers and observe other commands. ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas relates that the Prophet said to Muadh ibn Jabal, before sending him on a dawah mission to Yemen: “You are going to a nation who are People of the Book. When you reach there, first ask them to testify to the oneness of God and to Muhammad being His messenger. When they have accepted this, tell them further that God has ordained that they worship five times a day. After they have accepted this also, explain to them that God has made almsgiving obligatory and this zakat will be taken from their rich and distributed among their poor. When they agree to that also, you should refrain from showing any interest in their most valued possessions.” (Bukhari) That is why the prophets were given only basic teachings at the initial stage, so that they propagated these teachings for long periods. Thereafter, such detailed instructions were revealed as were consistent with the prevailing circumstances. It has never happened that a prophet has introduced in the first stages of Dawah work the whole social and cultural system to any community, and demanded that they establish an Islamic state immediately or enforce all Islamic laws in all spheres of life. Although all of the commandments, in the above mentioned Hadith, had already been revealed, the Prophet advised the da‘i not to impart all of them to the mad‘u at the same time, but rather to put them to the people gradually, according to their circumstances. This reveals the fact that just as the commandments were originally sent by God gradually in instalments, even now it is desirable that they be presented with gradualness. The order of their revelation tells us that they are meant to be presented to people step by step at all times. It would be wrong to say that although they were originally revealed gradually, after the completion of their revelation, the policy of gradualness had been discarded, and that they should now be presented all at one time in their entirety.