Final Word
God made a covenant with those who were given the Book to make it known to people and not conceal it. But they cast it behind their backs and bartered it for a paltry price: what an evil bargain they made!
—The Quran, 3-187
God has created man in freedom, but this freedom is not unlimited. The freedom of the individual is taken away at death. And, the freedom of the whole human race will be taken away on Doomsday. After the cessation of life in this world, a new life will begin in the Hereafter. There people will be divided into two groups: one who, having made proper use of their freedom, making it subservient to the will of God will enter into Paradise; the other group will be of those who, having been fearless of God in using the freedom granted to them, will be sent to Hell. This division will be eternal: the people of Hell will remain eternally in Hell, whereas the people of Paradise will remain in eternal bliss.
This means that about a hundred years of life in this world is going to end in an eternal fate for humans. And the end will be either a terrible punishment or the greatest of rewards. This state of affairs makes the matter of life extremely grave. Despite this extraordinary gravity, all realities remain hidden from human eyes. God, the angels, paradise, hell—nothing is visible. As such, it was expected from man that when these realities were revealed, he would say, “God, I did not know that this was going to be the end of life. Why did You not tell us before?”
In view of the delicacy of this situation, God made an arrangement whereby, with the very creation of the first man, He began sending prophets to the world. In fact the very first man was also the first prophet. The prophets were sent revelations so that they could convey the divine message to mankind. This series of prophets continued from Adam to Jesus Christ. Finally God decided to send the Final Prophet to whom He would send him the last divine book which would be preserved for all time. This event in the seventh century ushered in a new age in human history, subsequent to which the Book of God was to remain in preserved state and no further prophets were to be sent by God.
Then the question arises as to what arrangement was made by God for conveying the Creation Plan of the Creator for all the human beings who are born after the cessation of prophethood. The community of the followers of the Prophet Muhammad, the final prophet of God had the onus of conveying in full the divine message to the people. Subsequently these people were charged with conveying the divine message to every generation till Doomsday, so that when the case of these people was presented before God on the Day of Judgement, the followers of the Prophet might stand up and say that they had conveyed the divine message to the people, and that in spite of this, they had not accepted it, and were therefore themselves responsible for their actions.
This is the task that has been referred to in the Quran as ‘calling people to God.’ It is an obligation devolving upon the followers of the Prophet. They can in no way be exempted from performing this task.
No amount of individual worship will save them from God’s chastisement. If the followers of the Prophet do not perform this task of conveying God’s message to the world, they too will be held accountable along with other communities in the Hereafter. If the other communities or peoples committed the wrong of not adopting a life in accordance with Quranic principles, the Muslims will be held responsible for not having conveyed God’s message to them. The second case is in no way of a lesser degree than the former.
The Jews invited God’s displeasure because they kept secret the religion that had been revealed to them by God and did not make people aware of its teachings. If the bearers of the Quran are guilty of the same wrong as the bearers of the Taurah, they shall in no way be shown any leniency.
Divine law will not spare them, just as it did not spare previous communities. God has no special relationship with any particular community. Nothing is further from the truth than the belief that any group has a special relationship with God.
Muslims today have to perform for the benefit of the world the same duty of calling people to God, as was performed by the prophets for their communities. This is a duty which involves conveying the message of the Quran to them. Just as without the payment of zakat all the wealth of a person remains unlawful to him, similarly without performing this duty it is unlawful for us to spend our time and money on anything else. We can have no happiness or security until we devote ourselves to this cause.
The following are the points on which we have to focus our attention:
This work does not simply involve making speeches and writing books, but is rather the task of representing God. It has to be performed with the meticulous care and according to the highest standards which it demands. We have to do it with the same utmost sincerity and seriousness with which a government official conveys an important message entrusted to him.
Well-wishing and other demands as are expected of an earnest undertaker of a serious task, have to be combined together while performing this work. Moreover, it is also essential that the Hell of which one is going to warn people be a cause of great apprehension for one’s own self, and one be oneself extremely desirous of the Paradise whose glad tidings one is conveying to others. If one’s preaching or dawah work is not marked by these characteristics it would be ludicrous to even think of undertaking it.
The greatest enigma of present history is how over the last two hundred years, in the entire Muslim world, innumerable great movements were set in motion which gave Muslims immense opportunities; to do their work, yet the actual results of their efforts were almost negligible. This failure came about in spite of the Muslims having all kinds of resources for the execution of their programme. There was nothing that was not abundantly available to them—in terms of learned and venerated persons, sincerity, numbers of great of people, sacrifice, quantity, material resources, etc. However, if the results of their tumultuous efforts are considered, it will become clear that they have actually driven the caravan of the Ummah backwards.
Those who do not believe in God or do not regard God as the Living Doer of all things, would be prone to give any self-styled explanation for the above failure. However, faith in God demands that we understand this whole event as being the result of God’s Sunnah and consider it a divine matter in the complete sense.
If we look at it from this perspective and make the Quran our guide, then it is proved beyond doubt that the reason for the failure of our movements has been only one. And, that is, these movements have not performed the real task for which God promised divine succour for the community. God promised divine succour on the condition that we help Him. Helping God means to engage ourselves in the divine mission of making people aware of the Creation Plan of God. Our movements should be aimed not at acquiring worldly rights through protesting and demanding, but rather sould be Hereafter-oriented movements, in which our goal is to make man aware of what he will have to face in the next world. Thus, our movements should be dawah-oriented and not political or economic in nature.
This is the real reason for all our efforts in the present age having been rendered futile (Quran 2:217, 3:22). We launched movements based on worldly politics and that is why we were not eligible for divine succour. If now we want to save ourselves from destruction, the only way for us to achieve this is to stand up as da‘is to the peoples of the world, abandoning any collision course on all counts—political and economic—and making the conveying of the Creation Plan of God the real issue of importance.
This is the only way of ensuring succour from God and unless we obtain God’s succour we will not be able to achieve success of any kind—either in this world or the Hereafter.
Honour for the believers is a divine gift or blessing received as a reward for the performance of some special task. Then what is that special task to be carried out by the believers which enables them to receive this reward? It is the same as the objective of raising the Muslim community. That is, conveying the message of God to man, making people aware of the divine will in order that no one may lay the blame on God on the Day of Judgement, for not having been informed of the Creation Plan. This is the act which makes believers deserving of the divine blessings. If we fail to perform this desired task, no other struggle can make us deserving of divine blessings.
