New Possibilities for
Inviting People to God

The Ulama should have availed of the new possibilities to convey God’s message to people that emerged in the modern age, such as religious freedom, rational support for religious truths and means of communication to take the word of God into every home.

New possibilities of conveying God’s message to people have emerged in the modern age. I have written extensively on this issue in numerous books and articles. Here I will only briefly touch upon this matter.

1. The basis of the modern age is freedom of thought. Among the many results of the modern intellectual revolution is freedom of religion. Before this, human history was throughout characterised by religious persecution. For the first time, religious freedom, including the freedom to propagate religion, has been recognized as a legitimate human right in the modern age. Through the human rights charter of the United Nations, this has been accepted by all the world nations. This development has made it possible for the first time in history to engage in the task of conveying God’s message to people without any obstruction whatsoever.
2. Among the several scholarly disciplines that the modern age gave birth to was Anthropology, whose subject matter is human societies. Anthropologists made objective studies and proved that belief in God and religion have been present in all societies, thus showing that such belief is natural to human beings and an answer to a universal human quest. This finding significantly boosted the possibilities for Muslims to convey God’s message to people, for it indicated that such belief is as indispensable for human beings as food.
3. The findings of modern science amazingly fit into what the Quran has revealed. They were a confirmation of this prediction of the Quran:

We shall show them Our signs in the universe and within themselves until it becomes clear that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord is the witness of all things? (41: 53)

In this way, modern science became a powerful potential academic tool in the hands of those engaged in conveying God’s message to people and sharing the message of Islam with them.

4. Among the many new inventions wrought by the modern age were new means of communication. For the first time in history, these reduced distances to the barest minimum and made it possible for a preacher of Islam to make the entire world his arena for dawah work or conveying God’s message to people. This was an expression of a tradition of the Prophet wherein he predicted that a time would come when the message of Islam would reach into every house in the world: “To every home, big or small, God will bring the message of Islam.” (Musnad Ahmad, Hadith No. 23814)
5. In the Introduction to my book Aqliyat-e Islam, first published in 1978, I wrote:

“In the Free World, extraordinary new possibilities for dawah have opened up. However, this exception is the Communist world because it is entirely under coercive rule. Free opportunities for dawah are unavailable there.”

However, just thirteen years after I wrote these lines, conditions changed considerably. The end of 1991 was also accompanied by the end of the Communist Empire. Thus, the same opportunities to convey God’s message to people were opened up in erstwhile communist countries as were previously available only in the non-communist world.