The Call of Dawah in the Modern Age March-April

intellectual activity. In the first phase of Islam, this change was brought about by the Muslims unilaterally laying down their arms; now this change can be effected by unilaterally putting an end to the campaign for Muslim rights. The sacrifice of national interests is difficult even to contemplate. Yet in such a loss, there is gain. The day Muslims acknowledge this, a chain of events will be set in motion leading to the victory of Islam. In the material sphere, Muslims may have conventional weapons as opposed to the modern weapons of other communities, but in the intellectual field they are equipped with the Truth. The prejudice and bigotry which are the mainstay of other communities can never withstand Reality for long. According to the Quran, God taught man by means of the pen. This underscores the significance of literature for the purpose of the Islamic call. In Islam, the production of literature does not entail just the compilation, publishing and distribution of a number of books. What it signifies, in effect, is the material process of casting the light of the Quran far and wide over the whole of humanity. This means communicating the word of God—revealed originally in Arabic—to speakers of a multitude of different languages in other communities. The onus of translation, which is no easy task, clearly devolves upon ordinary mortals, as is implied in the following verse of the Quran: “We sent not a messenger except to teach in the language of his own people, in order to make things clear to them.” (14:4) It would perhaps be appropriate to say, placing the matter in the eternal rather than the temporal perspective that just as God taught mankind by means of the pen in Arabic, it is now up to human beings to teach their fellow men by the pen in other languages.