Purposeful Character

Purposeful Character

1991 2 February 25-26 Purposeful Character (666) When the telephone rang on September 6,1990, I picked up the receiver and found myself talking to Anita Pratap, a special correspondent of Time magazine. It seemed that she needed some information on the position of women in Islam. I suggested that she should come to our office so that we could discuss the whole issue. Arriving punctually, she showed me a previously prepared article in English on the status of women in Islam. Based on information supplied by Time’s representatives in various Muslim countries, it was entitled, ‘Behind the Veil’. This had been sent to her by the head office in New York. First, information had been collected, sifted through, assessed, and then written up. But this was only a first draft. Now the important process of verification had to be gone through. Copies of this draft had therefore been sent to several of Time staffers in different Islamic areas, so that they could have it thoroughly scrutinized by genuine religious scholars. (This was what was now required of me.) In this way, not even the smallest error could escape detection. Only when the chief editor was satisfied that the process of verification was absolutely complete would the article be deemed fit for publication.

I asked Ms. Pratap why they worked so hard for just one article. She replied, “Our magazine, Time International, is read all over the world. We just can’t afford to make any mistakes.”

There is a great lesson to be learned on the subject of achievement from these words uttered by· Time’s representative, consider that Time aims at having subscribers from all over the world. If it is to succeed in this, there should not be a single mistake in any of its issues. If people feel that its reports are based on wrong, or even inadequate information, they will stop subscribing to it. Time would then have no hope of world circulation.

Time cannot afford to be slipshod about its facts, because that would be the surest way to unpopularity and a major drop in circulation. Readers cannot, after all, remain interested in ‘facts’ if there is to be constant doubt about their veracity.

The same psychology, on a much greater scale, is characteristic of a da’i. The da’i’s chief objective is to make God’s religion acceptable to the people. To this end, the da’i ensures, in all possible ways, that there should be no such untoward occurrence between himself and the mad’u (his listener) as will turn the latter away from the truth, thus making God’s religion a matter of doubt in the mad‘u’s eyes – in short, unacceptable to him.

For this purpose, a dayee is extremely careful to avoid such ‘errors’. He communicates his message in the language of the mad’u (Qur’an. 14:4); he speaks to him with such sincerity that it reaches his very soul (4:63); he bears with patience all the hurt that the mad’u causes him (14:12); he renders material assistance to people in order to soften their hearts (9:60); he purifies himself of all moral weaknesses (74:4); he becomes the madu’s well-wisher to the greatest possible extent (7:79); he sometimes even goes so far as to grant unjust wishes, as the Prophet did when he eliminated the words, ‘the Messenger of God” on the occasion of drafting the Hudaybiyyah peace treaty, just because of the stubborn insistence of the mad‘u.

As the representative of Time put it, “We can’t afford to make mistakes”. The same thing, only with greater intensity, has to be said by a da‘i. The dayee must feel that he cannot afford to do or say anything which will distance the mad‘u from his message. He should, of his own accord, and with no reference to others, bear the entire responsibility of never allowing the mad‘u to feel doubtful about his message of truth. He must make up his mind to avoid, at all costs, any action which might produce an antagonistic psychology in the mad‘u, thereby rendering his message unacceptable.