Discovery of Islam

Islam was the shift in emphasis. Some important teachings of Islam were relegated to the background—for instance, concern for the larger humanity, dawah, patience, etc. Dawah is the greatest mission of the Muslim Ummah, for, although prophethood came to an end with Muhammad , the mission of the Prophet has not yet come to an end. The mission continues through the Ummah, as a matter of religious duty. It would be no exaggeration to say that without the performance of this duty, its very credibility of being the Muslim Ummah would become doubtful. Strangely, indeed, dawah found no place in the literature of the centuries after the Prophet. Neither has it been mentioned anywhere in the Muslim agenda of today. The classical commentaries of the Quran (Tafsir) also fail to give any prominence to dawah as a concept. In books of hadith too, we find chapters on all subjects except dawah. The same is true of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) in whose texts we do not find a chapter on dawah. According to the Quran, the exercise of patience (sabr) is a deed which makes man eligible for the highest reward (8:46); the patient man will be rewarded “beyond measure” (39:10). But the interpretation that gained popularity in later times was that the injunction of sabr, patience, had been abrogated and replaced by jihad (in the sense of qital, fighting). Thus, one who studies these books gathers the impression that, consciously or unconsciously, patience might have been important in the past, but that nowadays it has lost its relevance. Now jihad (in the sense of qital) and not sabr is of the foremost importance. It follows that whenever a reformer calls Muslims back to their duties concerning dawah and sabr, they become antagonistic to such a call, because they have become conditioned to finding it alien to their thinking.