How to give Dawah: An advice for Youth
Allah said in the Holy Qur'an, "It is He who sent the Messenger with the guidance and the deen of haq, that it may prevail over all other deens?" In this oft quoted ayah, we are informed by Allah, of one of the tasks that has been laid before this noble Ummah, that is, to make the deen of Islam the dominant deen in the world. In regards to this Islamic notion, Muslims have no choice but to invite people to Islam and challenge the every system that exists in the society with Aqeedah of Islam. Islam is a Deen of guidance that is unlike Christianity and Judaism, which are creeds that pertain to the areas of human beliefs, personal worships and matters of personal morality only. In essence, the difference lies in the fact that religion is a concept whose sphere is restricted to the personal arena, whereas deen embodies much more than this.
The word 'deen' means 'way of life.' In its capacity as such, deen addresses not only issues of individual, but also of societal and political matters. Therefore, the deen of Islam organizes not only personal conduct and worship, but also relates to affairs of government, economics, judiciary and all other affairs of societal life. Muslims, with Aqeedah of Islam suppose to challenge every non-Islam systems that exists in the society rather we find them indulge in inter faith dialogues and the Muslim youth try to find contradictions in texts of various religions. Indulging in such activities is ?sheer waste of time.? This is because the non-Muslims had compromised their Aqeedah long time back for the sake of material pleasures. They had adopted capitalism as their ideology at the expense of their Aqeedah. Thus, we as Muslims should challenge capitalism and all the corrupted systems emanates from it with Aqeedah of Islam. A paradigm of how to give dawah is as follows: Social (women, cloning), economical, and economical system.
Women in West: In West, the value of women is related to her sexual appeal. For instance, in American until early 90?s women would be punished even if their ankles were uncovered. When it was realized that by giving them ?freedom? (free from old way of thinking and her sexuality) to women, prostitution was legalized and government started collecting taxes from brothels. Thus we see women, in order to pay of school or support their families are pushed to work in clubs dancing naked to attract more and more male and female customers. They are told that they should not be ashamed of, but rather it represents that they are enjoying ?freedom?. In US, the pornography industry generates $7 billion a year, a figure greater than ?legitimate film and music industries? combined. As a result, women are victims of sexual harassment, and rape everywhere. In West London, a middle-aged woman was raped by a 15 year old and 18 year old. While she was being raped, others watched and encouraged the episode, the youngest being 11 years old. Perhaps more shocking than this was that a girl actually held down the victim while her friends raped the woman. It appears that even women no longer value their honor. A documentary film on TV channel MSNBC talks about how prostitution, for women, is not only a source for supporting the family but also is presented as career for women.
Women in Islam: The antithesis to this situation is the deen of Islam where the true preservation of the honor of the woman is viewed as a life and death matter to be given the utmost care and attention. This is exhibited by the society and state and at all stages within the Muslim woman?s life as a daughter, wife, and mother. The Prophet (saw) said, ?Whoever dies protecting his honor dies shaheed.? The woman is one of those honor placed within the palm of the man as an Amana (trust) from his Creator Allah (swt) to be protected at all times. This attitude within an Islamic State would also affect every level of the society from the ruler, army, and to the man on the street. Prophet (saw) said ?the best of women are those who are best to their husbands. To each of such women is set down a reward equivalent to the reward of a 1000 martyrs...? For a mother to nurture her children by feeding, bathing, playing and smiling at them, is a great honour. The Prophet (saw) has said, ?When a woman breast feeds, for every gulp of milk she will receive a reward as if she had granted life to a being, and when she weans her child, the angels pat on her back saying, ?Congratulations! All your past sins have been forgiven, now start all over again.? He (saw) said, ?During pregnancy until the time of childbirth, and until the end of the suckling period, a woman earns reward similar to that of the person who is guarding the borders of Islam.? He (saw) said, ?The world and all things in the
world are precious but the most precious thing in the world is a virtuous woman.? This is the way that Allah (swt) has described the honour of the woman. Within an Islamic society, such an understanding will affect the men within the society at large, who will view the woman as an honour, regardless of whether she has a career or not. They will not belittle the position of the wife and mother but regard it with the highest of esteem. The first example is that of slander against the reputation of an individual. Today, this is not seen as a severe crime, but Islam views this as a serious issue and has prescribed lashings as the punishment for such an action. Women felt secure in their homes and on the street. In contrast to role of women in Islam, we find women such as Andrew Yates who murdered her four kids.
Economic system in Capitalistic society: The creed or Aqeedah of capitalism is to make profit at expense of human value, even it takes killing masses, child pornography, and exploiting other countries. The true nature of capitalism is explained in article of L.A times on the economic theory of English philosopher Herbert Spencer: ?Spencer created eugenics movement to stop unfit from reproducing because he believed that the most humane way was to do what economy would do in a more brutal way if left to itself. In Spencer?s view, all remedial social welfare measures simply prolonged and expanded human agony by increasing the population who would eventually die of starvation.? Spencer believed that it is the duty of the rich people to drive the poor into extinction. It was in fact a secret of capitalism to eliminate the poor. In regards to needs of humans capitalism defined it as limited resources and unlimited wants thus the concept of scarcity emerged from this thought. Even though the resources are abundant, the capitalist would create scarcity of jobs and resources in order to maintain high prices. The food produced by Great Plains of America is enough to feed entire world three times, but to maintain high prices surplus food is burned. Furthermore, economic solution for capitalism is to draw maximum profit even if it takes to invade other nations, exploit them and create wars. Regarding Gulf war, one commentator said, ?War brings business, and business is good.? An article on L.A times describes the policies of US government to keep people suffer from poverty: ?it?s the explicit policy of Federal Reserve Board to keep 6% of our work force unemployed?? Such policies will result in domestic violence such as robbery, murder, drugs, alcohol, and rape; the government will ensure that such problems exits in the society then government will establish programs like alcohol counseling, drugs counseling, and sex abuse counseling. These programs thrive multibillion dollars profit for the government. Regarding poverty, in the west it is described as non-fulfillment of luxury needs.
Economic system of Islam: The capitalism is a product of defeated mentality. All the systems emanates from such mentality are corrupted, biased, are subjected to maximize the profit at expense of human values, and profit is gained regardless of right or wrong methods. If scientific facts and discoveries are lost can be regained, if material wealth is lost it could be renovated again and nothing is lost, if intellect wealth collapses then everything is lost and this will lead to lost in discoveries and invention. Therefore, it is necessary to take care of intellect first, based on sound intellect, which accords to productive thinking; all the systems that are based on such thinking will be established to organized human life in proper manner. Thus, in Islam, the intellect is based on criterion of Halal or Haraam. Absence of this criterion would lead to decline in Islamic way of thinking of the Ummah. This is why prophet (saw) first molded the way of thinking of Sahaba before he could show them how to organize their life based on Islamic Aqeedah and all the systems that exits from that Aqeedah. Inshallah, I will focus more in details on economic system of Islam in my article ?Argentina in crisis: Islam-the only solution.?
Abraham Lincoln once said, America is the last best hope of man on Earth. We as Muslims need to challenge the corrupted systems of this world with Aqeedah of Islam to bring the humanity from suffering to justice of Islam and to prove that Islam is the only Hope for man on this Earth.
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