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“Thus We have made you a middle nation, so that you may act
as witnesses for mankind, and the messenger may be a witness for
you.” (2:143/22:78)
On theDay of Judgement when all human beings are gathered in
the Divine Court, these people (
da‘is
) will be brought as witnesses
before those to whom they had conveyed the divine message. This
is expressed thus in the Bible:
Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people
be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us
former things? Let them bring out their witnesses, that they may
be justified; or let them hear and say, “It is truth.” “You are my
witnesses,” says the Lord, “and My servant whom I have chosen,
that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He.
Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me.”
(Isaiah, 43:9-10)
The Prophet was so deeply involved in his responsibility as a
witness to the Truth that God had to say:
“It may be that you will destroy yourself with grief because they
will not believe.” (26:3).
Similarly, if Muslims were to become conscious of the fact
that, after the Prophet, it is they who have been ordained to work
in his stead, they would, with this realisation, be unable to sleep
soundly at night or to rest properly during the day. For a duty of
this nature implies that either they fulfil it, in which case they must
bear witness to the Truth before all the nations of the world, or be
apprehended as defaulters by God on the charge of having failed to
informpeople of what they will have to face in the next, eternal life.
It would be correct to assume that if Muslims do not proclaim the
Truth that God intended for the good of mankind, they definitely
incur the risk of having the Quranic decree—such as was applied
to the previous keepers of the divine books—applied likewise to
them. As the Quran states:
Those who conceal the evidence of the truth and the guidance
We have revealed, afterWe have made them clear to people in the
Scripture, will be rejected by God and so do others. But from those
Ca l li n g Pe o p l e t o Tre a d t h e Pa t h o f God
