THE DAAWA
Outing and activities of daawa and tabligh really shaped my training in spritituality, predication and group management. My first three days outing were in England in 1983 when I was sixteen, then my first forty days in 1987 in Pakistan. Since then I did 19 times forty days in addition to the four months, I even learnt urdu (Pakistan language) to have direct contact with the leaders.
The daawa and tabligh activity is a unique framework to understand the effort of the prophet, pbh. The tabligh is often blamed to be an archaic way of predication and people think it should take advantage of modern techniques: this is missing the point of tabligh goal and spirit. The tabligh is not a predication structure but a training one, and you will not be trained by preaching on radio or in newspaper, but by facing all kinds of people in the streets, by being belittled any time you are aggressed or humiliated, by searching all kinds of wisdoms to touch peoples’ heart and by imploring Allah every night to guide them. This is the training that matches most the one of sahabas, may Allah be pleased with them, which reproduces prophets’ life and enables to live the Quran. Otherwise, for daawa efficiency, my choice today is books, tv, radio and then the official way: being recognized by authorities and preach in official medias. I will now list limits and lacks of this movement, not that I have turned my back on it or that I am advising people against it, but a rational spirit should know the limits of what it’s doing and have a clue on what it could not accomplish. There is a first step in the tabligh after street daawa which is daawa at work. I am giving you the example of shaykh Amjad Ali from Karachi, cardiologist who owes his own clinic. He tells me how he does daawa at work:
« When a patient comes, I explain to him that his illness is due to his sins because Allah says: « Anything bad that happens to you is a consequence of your own deeds » (Consultation). So he must repent and I ask him what is going on in his life to see if he has to arrange his prayer, or he way of getting money or his relation with his relatives or something else. Then, when I give the subscription, I put: read Yasin three times per day; make such or such duaa, enf then the medicines. When we have to do surgery, i ask the family to fast and to pray in the clinic’s mosque while we ask Allah’s assistance and perform the surgery. When a patient stays at the clinic, we bring him the stone for the tayammum and we explain to him how to pray in his state. Patients also have daily hadeeths and sourat recitation sessions. Nurses have daily Quran and sciences learning sessions and some of them became aalimat – scholars - and hafeez – memorizing all the Quran - with this daily session».
And this is how tabligh is taught to all doctors in Pakistan and India and in all the countries following their instructions, and for each professional category there is a program for preaching at work. You are going to ask me what I have against it? What I have against it is that many countries do not follow this movement and are still limited to street daawa. And do you know why? Because tabligh leaders in these countries do not work and for them tabligh consists in making people stop working to be dedicated to daawa.
The other lack in the daawa and tabligh movement is the inexistence of the emir conception. We insist a lot on shura – concertation - but there is no training for being emir and almost no advices to the emir on the way of managing the group and there is never evaluation for the emir. This leads to perpetual renewal of inefficient emirs and errors in human ressources. The emir choice criteria remain the same: commitment and elderness even though some will never be able to lead.