19. Dawah and Patience
The programme of Islamic mission includes mainly two points—dawah and patience. Dawah means to convey the divine message of the Quran to all the people and patience means to adopt the method of acceptance in the existing situation in all other matters. This is what called the accepting the status quo.
This patience is essential for carrying out dawah work. It is the law of nature itself that here, in this present world, a man always faces unpleasant situations. If a da‘ee will argue the other people in every unfavourable situation he will find no time to do dawah work. On the other hand, the favourable atmosphere between the da‘ee and mad‘u will come to cease which is essential for a da‘ee to do dawah work.
Dawah work is always carried out on the price of sacrifice—the sacrifice of possessions, sentiments and the sacrifice of life— but what it required the most is to sacrifice one’s sentiments. A da‘ee repeatedly comes to have such unpleasant experiences from others as arouse negative feelings in the da‘ee and lead him to hatred and revenge. If a da‘ee is overpowered by this negative psychology the desired atmosphere of dawah work will be destroyed.
Therefore, a da‘ee should always keep this point in his view and keep himself on the line of positive psychology by sacrificing his sentiments. This is one of the essential conditions of dawah work. Without this dawah work cannot be performed. This is what called the acceptance of the status quo in the terms of politics and patience in Shariah. Dawah work is always performed on this sacrifice. Where there is no patience there is no dawah work.
Patience is, in fact, the price of dawah work. Only after paying this price of patience that thing comes to emerge as is called dawah. Patience, in other words, is the same thing which is called customer friendly behaviour in the terminology of commerce. A businessman adopts the method of unilateral forbearance. Similarly, a da‘ee also adopts the method of unilateral forbearance in preaching the message of God to the people. This mad‘u friendly behaviour is what called patience.
