You have a two-point formula: marefat and dawah. You have to attain marefat and to do dawah. Marefat means God-realization, or discovery of God. Dawah means to convey God's word to humanity.
You have a two-point formula: marefat and dawah. You have to attain marefat and to do dawah. Marefat means God-realization, or discovery of God. Dawah means to convey God's word to humanity. This is our two-point formula. Everything is hidden in this formula.
What is dawah? You can understand with an example. Christians have great passion to do dawah. The Quran has acknowledged this quality of the Christians. (61:14)
There is a book called The Adventurers for God. The book tells the story of a Christian missionary who went to South America. South America was then quite backward compared to North America, the USA. There are many jungles in South America. The missionaries decided to go to a particular jungle where barbaric people lived. They wanted to spread Christianity there. A team was sent there to understand the people of the jungle. The place neither had roads nor electricity. It only had people of the jungle.
When the team returned they reported that the jungle had insects, difficult terrain, no clean water, and other negative aspects. The person who had sent the team shouted out: "Are there any humans living in the jungle?" Are human beings present there?
The team replied that there were humans in the jungle. The person asserted: "Then we will go there." The Christian team then went to the jungle. The language of the people was different. In the beginning, the Christians did not understand their language.
Gradually, they learnt the new language. They went through great difficulties, learnt their language, developed grammar and alphabet for the language, and finally translated the Bible into it. Now the place has roads, hospitals and schools. It is well developed.
This is the missionary spirit of dawah. I give the credit to Christians for giving a new form to dawah -- that is, organized missionary work, or organized dawah work.
Perhaps, Muslims have not been able to do organized dawah. Muslims made great efforts, but couldn't do organized dawah work as the Christians did and are still doing today.
