On the authority of Tameem
ad-Daaree radhiyallahu ‘anhu, the Prophet sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam said, “The religion is sincerity, the
religion is sincerity, the religion is sincerity.” They said, “To who, O Messenger of
Allah?” He said, “To Allah, and His
Book, and His Messenger, and the Imaams (leaders) of the muslims, and their
common folk.” (Sahih Muslim, The Book
of Faith, No. 98)
O
you who have believed, avoid much [negative] assumption. Indeed, some
assumption is sin. And do not
spy or backbite each other. Would one of you like to eat the flesh of
his brother when dead? You would detest it. And fear Allah; indeed, Allah is
Accepting of repentance and Merciful (al-Hujura̅t, 49:12).
Last
week, for three days in my life, I had a taste of ‘being interrogated’. Questions on my activities with my juniors
here with regards to their da’wah and tarbiyyah, on how I treated my children,
on my ibadah and even my intention to having started the halaqah in my home in the first place, were
posted to me in an inappropriate manner.
This was not the first time. I
had had this before, years back, in 2003.
So 10 years later, I came face to face again with the same matter. Did I mention how it made me feel? Imagine a person who does not know you, come
to your house without a notice, by pass the head of the family, starts to
reorganize your things and when you served them food, though knowing you are a
Muslim, this person asked if the food is halal. That was how I felt.
I
tried really hard not to think about the story of one of the Prophet’s
companion who went to Madinah. This
companion, radhiyallahu ‘anhu, wanted to pray.
He went to a Christian woman’s house and asked if her house was
pure. This woman answered, “Purify your
heart and pray anywhere you like.”
Was
it a bad person that came to meet me?
No! They are good people who want
to do good things- for Islam. They did
not come from any governments but they did come from a system that wants to
govern. A system that forms student
circles and teaches them about Islam and inspiring them of what they can and
need to do to exalt Islam. All is good
as far as that goes.
But
things become nasty when we lost sight of the bigger picture. When our focus is to get people to follow our
way, our method, our modul, our style, our group instead of focusing on
people following Islam! With this subtle change of focus hence begin the rhetorical
da’wah. We start to focus on number of
members that we have under our wings because now that becomes the measuring
stick. The more members we have, the
better our group is, the superior we are compared to others, our methods must
be the right one to be used.
The
rhetorical da’wah creates an invisible net that each of us cast upon our
targeted mad’u, the people that we are calling to Islam. Everyone wants the big fish, the ready-to-go
person. We start to pick and
choose. We want the easy target. We do not want those who questions too much
either because i) they do not know enough; or ii) because they know a little
bit and are critical. Hence begin
another disgusting game of member snatching.
The
word snatch in itself is powerful and happens in split second may be. But these ‘people of da’wah’, their minds are trained, their behaviours are
trained, their responses are trained and they are trained to be patient. They did not come and grab in one go. They come, they assess the situation, they
get closer and try to know you but then, instead of fortifying the locally
existing da’wah works, they want their share of the people.
While
many did not realize this, they are taking the route of ‘the end justifies the
means’. They unconsciously throw out the
windows all the adab in pursuing their passion to bring people to Islam the way
they think is the only correct way.
Where did our respect go to the leader of that local community? When was it permissible to lobby one person
after another to get our goal fulfilled when shura, a unanimous consensus, is
the way of Prophet sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam?
Sneaking
has become our character in doing rhetorical da’wah so much so that we are not
troubled by it. In fact it is being
nurtured in us that we are sneaking around even in our personal life. Just because the technology allows us to go
on anyone Facebook and look into their ‘life’ as to who are their friends and
family, what right did we have to go behind their back and contact these people
for our own benefit? This is not a
character of the Prophet sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. He will not make gestures with his eyes although
a person who was standing in front of him was supposed to be beheaded. Instead he ended up forgiving and showing
mercy though he did not like it. That is the character of the man who
preached Islam day and night till his last breath. He was clear, concise and true. He was an open book. That is
the character of the man who we all claim we are following his footsteps in
doing our da’wah.
Islam
is inclusive instead of exclusive. We
want people to accept Islam at their own paces and build them up to reach the
peak of iman. By casting our nets only
on the big fish: those who are ready to do da’wah, those who want to attend
halaqahs, those who has Islamic education background, those who has the
potential of being our next cadet, that will propagate our way, we are losing a hundred people for each person that we
‘catch’. We need to acknowledge the
disparity of understanding that exist amongst us and try to find a middle
ground as a community. Likewise, we must
respect another community when they have established their middle ground.
I
plead and beg of us to PLEASE stop this rhetorical da’wah and focus on the
sincere da’wah. There is no glory in
winning more people at the expense of losing the barakah, the blessings from
Allah in our efforts to bring people back to Islam.
I
do not see the need for us to go and try to meddle into a local community as
long as they are not going against Islam.
Rasulullah built a masjid in Quba when there were only six muslims
there. Why? In my opinion, it was for them to have a
sense of community hence a sense of belonging.
On the other hand, Allah asked Rasulullah to destroy Masjid ad-Dirar
that was built by the hypocrites because this masjid was built more for a show
than to build the people’s faith in Allah.
I believe that once the masjid (read: Islamic community) has been
established, we have no right to come and overrule their leader and start to
boss people around, as subtly as we may be in so doing, it is wrong- simply
wrong. If they already have their
halaqah, what is the need for us to create more halaqahs for them? We can advise, again advise them on what they can do but do not dictate what they should do.
We think we are doing a good thing but we are carving notches in their
community and sooner or later, we will break them apart. And from my previous experiences, we will not
be there to catch them because then we will be busy casting our nets to catch
the next da’ee wannabe.
