Patience and Da‘wah

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

The moral character of the da'i must be marked by patience. It takes patience to wait for the right opportunities for dawah work to arise, and it also takes patience for the right sets of conditions to be created. Those who are unwilling to remain patient in the face of ignorance obduracy and unpleasantness can never fulfill the true calling of the da'i.

Sir James Jeans, the renowned English scientist, once stated in the foreword to a book he had written on physics and philosophy in 1941, that the scientific study of the universe had led us to the point where it seemed to suggest that "the door may be unlocked, only if we could find the handle." (p. 16)

This notion was put into words by this English scientist at a time when Muslims the world over, provoked at the domination of English, were waging bloody war against them. When the Muslims looked at the English, they saw in them only hateful enemies. Had they displayed patience — even only temporarily — at their political domination, they would very soon have discovered that the "handle" the English sought to the door of Reality, was already available to Muslims in the form of the Qur’an.

With this knowledge their entire attitude towards the English would have drastically changed. Soon they would have come to regard the English as their mad'u (congregation) and not as rivals. And then instead of praying for their doom they would have prayed for their guidance, and reformation. As their well-wishers they would have told them that what they (the English) required to reach the destination of reality had already been sent by God in the form of the Qur’an.

Patience is the necessary condition of da'wah — where there is no patience there can certainly be no da'wah.