Islam Rediscovered
7. Discovery of Islam
~ 104 ~
any prominence to
da‘wah
as a concept. In books of
hadith
too, we find chapters on all subjects except
da’wah
. The same is true of
fiqh
(Islamic
jurisprudence) in whose texts we do not find a
chapter on
da‘wah
.
According to the Qur’an, 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
da’wah
and
sabr
, they
become antagonistic to such a call, because they
have become conditioned to finding it alien to their
thinking.
