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Calling People to God

CALLING PEOPLE TO GOD

Dawah work has been termed in the Quran ‘the call to God.’ In other words, dawah work aims at bringing people closer to their Creator and Sustainer.

Calling people to God is telling them that the only right way of life for them on this earth is to become true believers in God.

Man has only two ways of leading his life in this world: the self-oriented and the God- oriented. The self-oriented life is one in which all activities centre on oneself. Such a life is lead according to man’s own thinking.

He follows his own whims and desires. To him the fulfillment of personal interests and ambitions is the standard by which to measure human success.

CALLING PEOPLE TO GOD

On the other hand, the God-oriented life is one in which man considers himself subservient to God. He moulds his feelings and emotions according to God’s commands. To such a person a successful life is one in which one lives and dies in accordance with God’s pleasure.

On the contrary, the self-oriented way of life engenders such feelings as pride, jealousy, malice and egoism. Man comes to think that truth is what he believes and falsehood is what he rejects.

However, the case of the God-oriented life is completely the opposite, in that it promotes an awakening of such feelings as the willingness to serve, devotion, humility, gratitude and accountability. If in the first case, man becomes a self-worshipper, in the other, he becomes a God-worshipper.

Calling people to God means warning man of the evil consequences of the self-oriented life, and therefore, inviting him to adopt the God-oriented life.

The most authentic and reliable source of knowledge of the divine teachings on both types of life has been preserved for us in the form of the Quran.

Calling people to God is purely other- worldly in nature. That is, it is in no way directly associated with national, social or economic issues.

 It is a campaign to call people to God. It starts in the spiritual and religious idiom and goes on in the same idiom and style till the end.

The mission of calling people to God is, in essence, a divine task, which is performed by human beings. It is important that it should be performed in a spiritual way.

Any work done in a non-spiritual way will not be a genuine call to God, even if it is done in His name.

Calling people to God aims at directing their attention neither to politics nor to national issues.

It is unequivocally the task of making people focus on God and must, therefore, be performed in the correct spirit.

What does ‘calling people to God’ mean? Primarily, its purpose is to acquaint man with the creation plan of God.

He should be told what his relationship with God is, and how God is going to deal with him in future.

In other words, this is like introducing man to God. Its objective is to awaken man from his slumber, cause him to realize his servitude and incline him to turn towards God.

The target of this work is man’s realization of God. He should discover his powerlessness in comparison with God’s immense power.

He should ‘see’ God before the veil of the unseen is removed. Before being directly confronted with Him, he should have the experience of realizing God indirectly.

The purpose of dawah work or ‘calling people to God’ is to awaken souls from their slumber. It is to put a lost person on to the right path leading towards God.

It is to awaken man’s insight so that he begins to see glimpses of God in the signs of the vast universe. It is to unveil the Creator in the mirror of His creation.

Dawah or ‘calling people to God’ is to make man capable of bonding directly with his  Lord, so that he starts receiving God’s blessings on a spiritual level.

It is thus that his heart and mind will become illuminated by God’s light. His entire being will be bathed in the shower of God’s blessings.

The aim of calling man to God is that, while still living in the world, he may become an inhabitant of the hereafter.

He will thus discover God’s greatness in the greatness of the world. He will start experiencing heavenly blessings in worldly comforts, while worldly hardships will remind him of the torment of hell fire.

He will be able to see glimpses of the realities of the hereafter in the beautiful scenes of the world of nature. This is the true aim of dawah, and the preparation of such individuals is the true measure of the da’i’s success.

It is said in the Quran that  God created man in ‘the best mould’ and then ‘cast him down to the lowest of the low.’¹ The process of dawah is to bring the individual back to his original state, to help him to gain entry into Paradise once again and to bring him under the protection of the Lord’s blessings.

The example of a man who is away from God is like a fish which has been taken out of water and thrown in the desert. Such a fish, completely out of its element, will soon face extinction. The best way to help it is to return it to water again.

In the same way, man is also an inhabitant of Paradise. He has a tremendous urge to find an unknown ideal. Every man is running after this unknown ideal. Over and over again, he leaps towards some worldly success or the other.

He hopes that this is probably that unknown ideal for which he has been striving all along, but without any success. Finally he leaves the world without having found his ideal.

This is the place where a da‘i (the one who calls people to God) has to perform his task of dawah, that is, to tell man that the ideal for which he has been searching for is none other than Almighty God and His Paradise.

It is God alone who can enable him to find his ideal and it is only by his finding God that this can happen. It is only after reaching Paradise that man will be filled with bliss, as he will find there the world for which he has been striving all along.

In this way, every man is the target of a da‘i (the one who calls people to God). A da‘i has to reach out to every individual. He has to remove the veil from every eye.

In other words, if the world has a population of about 7 billion, the da‘i has the same number of tasks to perform. He has to strive to make all the people reach their heavenly abode.

The name of this guide of humanity is da‘i—the one who calls people to God.

A da‘i is like a beacon standing by the roadside as a divine guide for the wandering caravan of humanity.

The Quran says: ‘O people! Worship God and save yourself from Satan’². In a later chapter, it records the words of the Prophet: ‘O people! Run towards God. I am on His behalf an open warner for you’³.

This is the real point of calling people to God. All the prophets warned their people about the necessity to seek out God and to shun Satan. In later generations, it will be the task of the da‘is to make people aware of this reality.

In this world man stands in between two calls: one is God’s call and the other is Satan’s. God is the source of all goodness, and He calls people towards all that is good. On the contrary, Satan is the source of all evil, and he calls people towards all that is evil.

The test of man is that he should not fall a prey to Satan’s illusion: he should rather leave Satan and run towards God.

God is the source of all virtues. He loves justice, mercy, truthfulness, honesty and sincerity. God wants man to adhere to all such virtues, casting himself in their mould.

On the contrary, Satan is the antithesis of all that is good. He is the very incarnation of all that is evil and he wants to draw man towards evil things. Satan kindles in man evil feelings and sentiments.

 He rouses in him dormant feelings such as jealousy, egoism, anger, vengefulness, pride, selfishness and ungratefulness.

In this way Satan suppresses the human qualities in an individual and inflames and aggravates the animal nature in him, so that man becomes like a devil.

In the present world man stands in between these two demands. Every man is standing on the edge of an inner battle.

On the one side lies the conscience which pulls him towards God. On the other side there is his ego, which pushes him towards Satan. His conscience represents God, while his ego represents Satan.