The Three Types of Dawah

They don't even have to look at each other to pass the ball. And it's all like... It's like clockwork, right?

Who's gonna win? The team that is arguing with each other or the team that's synced together? The team that's synced together.

Brotherhood in Mission

One of the main missions of our Ummah is to do the work of Dawah. If we're not brothers, that mission can't get done. You can't do it individually. Dawah, you can do a little bit of Dawah individually, but it doesn't mean much. In the end, it's a collective effort. It's a communal thing.

That job will not get done unless we're sitting together. Unless we take advantage of each other's talents. Because then we don't reinvent the wheel. A lot of times, there's a reinvention of the wheel. You know what that means, right? Somebody else is doing it, and you do it over again.

No, you need to build off of that and do something more. That's what synchronization is all about. No two people are doing the same thing. Two people are complementing each other's efforts. That doesn't happen until there's brotherhood.

The Three Types of Da'wah

Now I want to give you some idea, at least in these last 15 minutes or so, I want to give you some idea of some aspects of Dawah that are not often talked about. That at least Insha'Allah helps us organize our thoughts about the work of Dawah. There's an ayat in the Quran that basically gives us a clue that there are going to be three stages of Dawah. There are going to be three kinds of Dawah, you can say.

Dawah, once again, for those of you who don't know the Arabic term, inviting people to Islam. The invitation to Islam. Three kinds of people there are going to be.

First Type: General Masses

The most common, the first one, is going to be masses of people. The majority of people. The common masses, you can call them. The common people, everybody. And you know, at the level of everybody, you need to be able to deliver a message that anybody can understand. It's a simple message, it's a straightforward message, and it's a message full of good advice.

It's good advice on how people should live. What they can do to make their life better. In the end, our religion, one of its most essential benefits, if you follow it, if you believe in it, if you practice it, it makes your life better. It brings peace to your marriage, it brings peace between you and your friends, it brings you peace in yourself, it brings you peace at the workplace, you're at peace with yourself and others around you.

For the masses of people, what is needed? Good advice. That's the kind of Dawah that's needed at the level of the masses. They need to be shown the beauty of this deen, and how it's good counsel and good

advice. The Qur'an's term for good advice is (الْمَوْعِظَةُ الْحَسَنَةُ - al-maw`iẓatu al-ḥasanah) The Qur'an's phrase is (الْمَوْعِظَةُ الْحَسَنَةُ - al-maw`iẓatu al-ḥasanah) What that means is a good sermon, a good counsel, good advice, you know, relevant advice.

Second Type: Intellectual Elite

You know, in every society, there's common people, and then there are, you can call them the leaders of that society. But I don't mean in the political sense only. Leaders in society are, the better term for them is the intellectual elite. The intellectual elite.

These are very intelligent people in society, Muslim or non-Muslim, and they are at the top of their fields, whether their field is finance, or it's government, or it's economics, or it's, you know, any sciences or whatever. They're at the top of their fields. They are the pioneers in their fields. Everybody else looks up to them.

If you want to invite them to Islam, good advice, good counsel is not enough. Because these are really smart people, what kind of questions do they ask? Easy ones or hard ones? They ask hard questions. They ask deep questions.

For example, somebody who is at the highest level of their studies in, let's say, finance. You know, and they're very successful. Or somebody people look up to, like somebody like the head of the Federal Reserve, for example. I have an opportunity to talk to him about Islam. He's going to ask me not about Islam, but he's going to say, what does Islam say about the stock market? What does it say about, you know, corporations?

If he's asking me a certain level, if I have to give him Islam, I have to give him Islam at what? At his level. At his level. And it's not like that's a bad thing. We're supposed to present Islam at every level. And if people are at different levels, we have to be able to present our deen at different levels.

Now that advanced level of presenting our deen is that going to benefit everybody? If I start giving a khutbah about, you know, anti-trust laws and corporations and, you know, is that going to benefit everybody? No. What did most people need? What did I tell you? Good advice. But then these operational needs, special kinds of knowledge, special kind of wisdom is necessary to deal with them.

Third Type: Debaters and Responders

Now let's imagine we're living in a happy time where we realize that our young generation, we have to turn them into what? Dawahis. And we realize a good number of them, we have to create an army of men and women that are going to give good advice.

And we also have to create at the same time an army of our leaders, our young leaders, that are going to be able to give dawah at higher levels. They're going to be specialists. And we have that vision. We start producing these people.

If you imagine that starts happening, you know what's going to happen? The society at large, they're going to start getting scared. They're going to start getting scared. This is crazy. Some of our really top people are becoming Muslim. This can't be good.

Why Opposition Arises

Why would anybody become afraid of Islam anyway? I'm saying that when this happens, when dawah is given, common people are appreciating the advice of Islam, really influential people in society are starting to become Muslim. Why would anybody be afraid of Islam anyway?

Because our deen, it has two goals. In dunya, in this world, the goal of our religion is justice. In the akhirah, in the next life, the goal of our religion is success. What our deen gives us in this world is what? Justice.

Justice between man and woman. Justice between the slave of Allah and the master. Justice between business partners. Justice between the government and the people. Justice between employers and employees. It's justice across the world.

Guess who hates justice? People who take advantage of injustice. For example, I'll give you a small example. You know if Islam started getting stronger in this country, you know who one of our biggest enemies would be? Budweiser. Honestly, you know why? Because our deen teaches us the injustices that spread because of what evil?

The entire casino industry in Las Vegas would hate Islam. Budweiser would hate Islam. The pornography industry would hate Islam. Are these small industries? No, these are multi-billion dollar, trillion dollar industries. We would create some very powerful enemies if we started making Islam a force.

The Need for Skilled Debaters

You know what they do? They reduce this level. And what they do is they produce these talkers. Very eloquent, very sharp talkers. Whose only job is to talk trash about Islam. On the radio, on TV, on every media possible. Their job is to show people how evil Islam is. How ugly Islam is. How crazy Islam is.

To respond to those fools, and to put them in their place, we need to produce a third kind of dawah. There's a kind of dawah that needs general advice. There's a kind of dawah that speaks to the intellectuals. And there's a kind of dawah that specializes in debate. He specializes in the arguments that are made against Islam. And he puts them in their place. He humiliates them. Just like they try to humiliate our deen. Fire with fire.

Speech and Action in Da'wah

As I talk about Dawah today, I want you to remember, how many kinds of people? Three. Three kinds of people. But I also want you to remember that Dawah has two parts. So at every one of these levels,

there's two parts.

And those two parts are speech and action. For a Dari, for someone who might speak into Islam, they have to have good speech and also good action. If you have good speech, and your action doesn't show it, like I talk to you about brotherhood, and somebody comes up to me afterwards and say, I want to talk to you. Even though I call him brother. If I do that, then my actions don't reflect my speech. It's useless. It's pointless. It has no weight. It has no credibility.

Our speech has to be there, we should say the right thing, and we should also act. Allah tells us this about Dawah:

Who is better in speech than one who calls to Allah and does righteous deeds and says, "Indeed, I am of the Muslims."

This is what Dawah is. You call to Allah, and you act righteously. There's speech and there's action.

Specializations Within Each Type

Within each of these layers, within each of these areas of dawah, there are specializations. Like within general masses, we need dawah specifically for teenagers because they got weird problems that a specialist has to deal with. Who's going to talk to teens? I can't talk to teens. People think I can, I can't. I don't know. They're on a different planet at this point as far as I'm concerned.

There's dawah to men. There's dawah to women. There's dawah to families. There's dawah to parents. There's dawah to children. There's dawah to our seniors. There's dawah to the Christian community. There's dawah to the Jewish community. There's dawah to the Hindu community. The Buddhist community. The Agnostic community. The Atheist community. They all need dawah. They all need it.

And when it comes to debate, there are people who are debating against Islam from a political point of view. They're debating against Islam from a Hadith point of view. From a Qur'an point of view. From a Sharia point of view. From a social justice point of view. They have these different angles on which they attack Islam. From a historical point of view, they'll attack whether the Qur'an is the same Qur'an from the time of the Prophet or not.

We need responses from each angle. And mashallah, we have the manpower. We really do. We have the manpower. And we have amazingly talented, intelligent youth that can become resources. They can become treasures for the ummah. They really can. And we have to invest in them.

Example: Kevin's Transformation

I'll give you just one example of it and I'll conclude. Some time ago, I met this young guy. Kevin is a good friend of mine. I met him in Chicago. I was teaching an Arabic class in Chicago. And I met this young brother named Kevin Mackin. Who had become Muslim in college.

He went to University of Chicago. Philosophy major. Wanted to go to law school after that. And he had a 4.0 GPA in philosophy. And he was originally... I think two generations back, they're Spaniards. But he's a white American, you can see.

So this guy gets a 4.0 GPA in philosophy. Hardcore atheist. Hardcore atheist. He used to have a video blog about atheism and how stupid people are that believe in God. That's what his video blog used to be on YouTube. And he had like hundreds of thousands of hits on it.

Senior year of college, he became Muslim. Senior year of college. And he actually became Shia first. He was given dawah to Islam by a Shia guy in college. And he became Shia. And he was a Shia for two years. And then on his own research, he became Sunni. No Sunni gave him dawah. He just on his own research said, No, no, no, this is the better. This is the right way. And he became Sunni.

And then he started another video blog. And that was about how stupid atheists are. Right? And how dumb their arguments are. How stupid he used to be, etc. Hundreds of thousands of hits again. And you know what? Atheists leave death threats on his trolls at the bottom of his video.

Our Responsibility and Opportunity

So you know, people like that, when I met him, he wanted to continue his Islamic studies. So I said, Bro, we found a program in Malaysia actually. A master's degree in Islamic philosophy and ethics. Which basically would prepare him to do some real dharma work when he comes back.

But you know, there's talent like that. It's just all over the place. If we were really a community, we would spot that talent before they had to look for solutions. We would say, Come on, let's go. We'll help you out. We all, this is all of our problems. It's not one person's problem, one person's project.

Bottom line though, in this talk, in this brief conversation I wanted to have with you, I wanted to give you at least some picture of the kinds of areas of Dawah that are needed. And the kinds of under, you know, the prerequisites we all have to fulfill and how we have to become a family.

Wallahi. You know, we're all brothers in Islam, but people that are living in Plano or praying at the same masjid or you're coming here for Jummah, you have even more reason to be brothers. You're brothers even by proximity on top of Islam.

The Gift of Freedom

We are in a better position to do this than most Muslims across the world. There are Muslims in the world, and if they say even a little bit about Islam, they are arrested. In Muslim countries, they are

arrested. They are taken away.

Allah has given us this gift of free speech that we enjoy in this country. Allah will ask us about it. Allah will ask us about this gift. This gift of the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that is part of the constitution that we enjoy, Muslims enjoy in this country.

How did we, when we pursued our happiness, did we pursue Allah's pleasure at the same time? We're gonna have to answer Allah. When we have liberty in this country, did we use that liberty to serve Allah's deen? We will have to answer.

As an ummah, we have to become people of responsibility. I pray this brief talk was of benefit to you.

The Quranic Foundation

Let me conclude with the ayah that ties everything together:

"Call to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best. Indeed, your Lord is most knowing of who has strayed from His way, and He is most knowing of who is [rightly] guided."

Call to the way of your master. You need to call to Allah. When we call people, we have to let them know this deal will be a struggle. When you go on a road, it's hard, you get tired. It's not just an easy thing, you come into Islam. We have to call people to this struggle.

How would you call these people? (بِالْحِكْمَةِ - bil-hikmah) - With wisdom. You know there's a higher elite of society, how do you call them? With wisdom.

(وَالْمَوْعِظَةِ الْحَسَنَةِ - wal-mau'izatul hasanah) - And with good advice. Who do you give good advice to? How do you go?

(وَجَادِلْهُم بِالَّتِي هِيَ أَحْسَنُ - wa jadilhum billati hiya ahsan) - And you debate them in the way that is best. Who is this? The debaters.

(إِنَّ رَبَّكَ هُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِمَن ضَلَّ عَن سَبِيلِهِ - inna rabbaka huwa a'lamu biman dalla 'an sabilihi) - Your master, he truly knows best about who's been lost or who's misguided from his path. Allah knows. In other words, when you do da'wah, don't expect people to become Muslim. Allah knows who's guided and who's misguided. That's not your job. Your job is to do da'wah.

(وَهُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِالْمُهْتَدِينَ - wa huwa a'lamu bil-muhtadin) - And He knows who are committed to guidance. You don't worry about that. You just do the calling. You just do the work of da'wah. The results are with Allah.

What an amazing way Allah summed the entire philosophy of da'wah together in one ayah. This, by the way, is surah number 16. Those of you who'd like to read the passage yourselves, the entire passage is

very powerful. Surah number 16. And this is ayah number 125.

"May Allah bless me and you with the Wise Quran and benefit me and you with its verses and wise remembrance."