Daʿwa

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Information and Daʿwa center for proselytizing in Toronto

Daʿwa ( Arabic دعوة, DMG daʿwa ) is an Arabic term which in general terms encompasses a wide range of meanings ("call, appeal, invitation, advertising, propaganda, invocation, blessing"), but in a specific sense today mostly the "call to Islam " or " Call to God ”in the form of missionary activity. A person who performs Daʿwa is called Dāʿī or Dāʿiya , the corresponding plural is Duʿāt . There have been several Daʿwa movements in Islamic history that were associated with claims to political rule. Daʿwa in the sense of promoting Islam is institutionalized in numerous organizations today. Some of them, like the Islamic World League and the Muslim Brotherhood , operate internationally.

Islamic Dawah Center in the Old Houston National Bank building in Houston , Texas

Daʿwa in the Koran

The term Daʿwa is found in several places in the Koran , but there it primarily means the invocation of a deity by man. Thus, in Sura 2 : 186, God affirms that he will answer “the invocation of a caller” ( daʿwat dāʿin ), and in Sura 13 : 14 it is declared that God alone is due the true invocation ( daʿwat al-ḥaqq ) during the invocation other beings or forces of nature is useless. In sura 10 : 89 God confirms to Moses and Aaron that their supplications ( daʿwa ) have been answered. In this sense, the word is synonymous with the Arabic term duʿā ' , which is derived from the same root. The statement in sura 40:43 that what the accompanying Meccans call the Prophet to do is entitled to "an invocation neither in this world nor in the hereafter" ( laisa la-hū daʿwa fī d-dunyā wa-lā fī l-āchira ), is probably also intended to express the powerlessness of the other gods.

In the Koran, however, God appears not only as an addressee, but also as the starting point of a call. In sura 30:25 , for example, the raising of the dead from the graves by God on the day of judgment is referred to as a “call from the earth” ( daʿwa min al-arḍ ). On the day of the resurrection, those who have violated should ask God in vain for a delay in order to be able to listen to his call ( daʿwa ) and to obey his messenger ( Sura 14 : 44).

For the understanding of Daʿwa in the sense of missionary activity, other passages of the Koran are more important, in which the noun daʿwa , but the verb daʿā (“to call”) occurs, from which the term is derived. In various places from the Middle and Late Meccan times , the prophet Mohammed appears as the caller. So he is addressed in sura 23 : 73 with the words: "You call people on a straight path". And in sura 16 : 125 he is asked: "Call (people) with wisdom and a good admonition on the way of your Lord and fight with them in the best possible way". In Sura 57 , the beginning of which Theodor Nöldeke considers Meccan, it is said, addressed to the people: "Why do you not want to believe in God when the Messenger calls you to believe in your Lord" (Sura 57: 8th). Conversely, there is also a "reputation" for bad. So in Sura 40:41 the amazement is expressed that Mohammed calls his people to salvation while they call him to the fire of hell.

In Sura 12 : 108, which is assigned to the late Meccan period, the call to God is described for the first time as a task that not only the prophet fulfills, but also all those who follow him. At another passage, from around the same time, the question is formulated: “Who would have anything better to say than someone who calls people to God, does what is right and says: 'I am (one) of them who have surrendered (to God) '? ”( Sura 41:33 ). A Qur'anic word that comes from Medinian times describes Daʿwa as a task incumbent on the entire Ummah and at the same time raises it to a moral level: “You should become a community (of people) who call for good, command what is right and forbid what is reprehensible. They will be well ”( Sura 3 : 104).

Daʿwa movements in the Middle Ages

The Hajimite Daʿwa

The first Daʿwa movement in Islamic history emerged in the early 8th century. During this time, the Banū Hāschim , the clan from the Meccan tribe of Quraish , to which Mohammed had also belonged, tried to oust the Umayyads from power, and for this purpose they built up a wide-spread propaganda network known as daʿwat Banī Hāschim (“Propaganda of the Hashimites “) Was designated. The advertising agents ( duʿāt ), who carried the Hashimite propaganda to the Arab garrisons of Eastern Iran, operated in secret and only appeared under cover under pseudonyms. The advertising was carried out in the name of someone who was still nameless, "the one from the house of Mohammed who finds approval" ( ar-riḍā min āl Muḥammad ). Within the Banū Hashim there were two large families, the Abbasids and the Alids . Your advertising agents sometimes worked together, but often also against each other.

A poem by the poet Safwān al-Ansārī, which quotes al-Jāhiz , reports that around the middle of the 8th century Wāsil ibn ʿAtāʾ, who is considered the founder of the Muʿtazila , traveled from Basra to Duʿāt in the various areas of the Islamic empire ( Kufa , Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, Khorasan , Armenia and Maghreb ). His Daʿwa did not pursue any direct political ambitions, but only served to spread his theological teaching. However, Wāsil had close ties with the Alides in Medina.

The Hajimite Daʿwa eventually brought the Abbasid family to power in 749. The Alides were left empty-handed when it came to the distribution of posts after the Abbasid takeover. The Abbasids claimed power completely for themselves and had the Alids persecuted. A return to the principles of the Hajimite Daʿwa only occurred under the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mūn . In the year 817 he installed the Aliden ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ar-Ridā as heir to the throne in order to reconcile the Aliden with the Abbasids.

Shiite Daʿwa movements

When, after al-Mutawakkil came to power after 847, the Abbasids reverted to anti-Alid policies, various Shiite groups began new Daʿwa activities. Al-Hasan ibn Zaid, the "great recruiter" ( ad-dāʿī al-kabīr ) of the Zaidis , founded his own Zaidite imamate in the northern Iranian Tabaristan in 864 .

In the last quarter of the 9th century a man named ʿAbdallāh al-Akbar organized a new Daʿwa from Chusistan and sent recruits to recruit supporters for the expected Mahdi . In just 25 years - from around 875 to 900 - the new daʿwa established a network of cells and communities that spanned the entire Islamic world from North Africa to South Asia, from the Caspian Sea to Yemen. The movement initially led to uprisings in Syria and Iraq and in 909 in North Africa to the rise of the Fatimids . Since Ismāʿīl , the son of the sixth Imam Jaʿfar as-Sādiq , played a very important role in the early days of this Daʿwa movement, the movement as a whole was referred to as Ismāʿīliyya .

After the Fatimids conquered Cairo in 969 , they continued their Daʿwa activities from there. An upper Dāʿī was placed at the head of the inner and outer missions. Every Thursday he held public teaching sessions in the palace of Cairo, the so-called madschālis al-hikma ("sessions of wisdom"), in which the adepts were instructed in the Ismaili secret doctrine after taking their vows ( mīthāq ). Outside the borders of the Fatimid Empire, the Daʿwa, which was still working towards the overthrow of the Baghdad caliph, continued to operate in a conspiratorial manner. One result of these Daʿwa activities was that in 1047 in Yemen the Dāʿī ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad founded a new Ismaili dynasty with the Sulaihids , loyal to the Fatimids, and brought Sanaa and Aden into its power.

The Daʿwa network of the Fatimids experienced some splits from the 11th century. In 1017, for example, the East Iranian Dāʿī Hamza ibn ʿAlī appeared with the claim that the era of the Qāʾim (eschatological ruler) had dawned and the ruling Fatimd caliph al-Hākim bi-amr Allāh was God. The Druze community emerged from this Daʿwa movement, which was also extended to numerous areas outside the Fatimid Empire .

When the Fatimid caliph al-Mustansir died in 1094 , the question of his successor divided the Ismaili communities. The caliph had designated his son Nizār as the future imam, but the vizier and army chief al-Afdal Shahanshah , the actual ruler of Egyptian politics, elevated another prince, his son-in-law al-Mustaʿlī to the throne. Nizār fled to Alexandria; however, his armed rebellion was put down, and he himself was captured and eliminated. The Persian recruiters of the Ismāʿīlīya under the leadership of Hasan-i Sabbāh then broke away from Cairo and founded a new Daʿwa ( daʿwa dschadīda ). From this Daʿwa movement, which also had a strong impact on Syria and India, the community of the Nizāritic Ismāʿīlites emerged.

In addition to the Nizāriten, another Ismāʿīlite group still exists today. It is called Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibīya and is headed by a "supreme Dāʿī" ( dāʿī muṭlaq ).

Daʿwa in the 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Daʿwa idea was taken up again and reinterpreted in the sense of a call to Islam. As early as 1911, Raschīd Ridā founded the " House for Daʿwa and spiritual guidance " ( Dār ad-daʿwa wa-l-iršād ) on the Nile island of Roda near Cairo . It was a school that was mainly attended by Muslim boys from the Dutch East Indies and the Swahili population of East Africa.

Hasan al-Bannā and the Muslim Brotherhood

Of fundamental importance for the further development of the Daʿwa concept was the 1935 publication Daʿwatu-nā ("Our Daʿwa"; 1935) by Hasan al-Bannā , the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood . Here he called for an Islamic Daʿwa that should encompass all areas of life:

“Listen, brother. Our daʿwa is a daʿwa that is 'Islamic' in the broadest sense, because this word has a wider meaning than what people generally assume. We believe that Islam is a comprehensive concept that regulates all areas of life, provides information on each of their affairs and provides a fixed and precise order. [...] Yes, our Daʿwa is Islamic with all that that includes in terms of meanings. You can understand what you want by it, as long as you stick to the Book of God , the Sunna of the Messenger of God and the way of life of the ancestors ( salaf ) in your understanding . "

In the same writing, al-Bannā emphasized that the Daʿwa should also be performed with modern means such as newspapers, plays, films, gramophones ( ḥākk ) and radio ( miḏyāʿ ).

To implement this program, the Muslim Brotherhood set up special training for the duʿāt , i.e. the daʿwa emissaries, from 1936 onwards . Once a year there was a festive event at which the graduates of the training were presented with a certificate ( risālat ḫiṭāb ad-daʿwa ), which authorized them to travel abroad as well. In 1939 this training was further structured and various degrees of training were introduced for the duʿāt . In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood published its own magazine called Daʿwa from the 1950s .

Internationalization of the Daʿwa movement

With the Islamic World League founded in Mecca in 1962 , the first international Daʿwa organization was created. The world league sees itself as the umbrella organization for the daʿwa clubs in the various Islamic countries. In fact, it functions as a religious and political mission organization for the Saudi state and serves as a means of spreading the Wahhabi version of Islam. The president of the constituent assembly is always the supreme mufti of Saudi Arabia, and the general secretary must also always belong to the "sons of the country" according to the statutes. H. come from Saudi Arabia. In 1967, former leaders of the Masyumi party founded the Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (DDII), Indonesia's first Daʿwa organization. It leaned heavily on the Islamic World League.

The Libyan government founded its own Daʿwa organization, the World Islamic Call Society , based in Tripoli, in 1972 to spread its version of Islam . In Malaysia, a foundation for Daʿwa, the Yayasan Dakwah Islamiah Malaysia , was established in 1974 , which a few years later received a semi-official position. The " Islamic-African Center in Khartoum " ( al-markaz al-islāmī al-ifrīqī bi-l-Ḫarṭūm ), an institution of the Sudanese government, opened in 1977 , was specifically aimed at the propagation of Islam in Africa and was used by several Arab states financed. It went on in 1992 in the International University of Africa .

In the Ivory Coast , the Muslim youth organization Association des jeunes musulmans de Côte d'Ivoire (AJMCI) carried out several “Daʿwa caravans” ( caravanes de daʿwa ) from 1993 onwards , during which young Muslims went to and from the villages for a limited time tried to bring Islam closer to the people.

Academization of the Daʿwa

Analogous to Christian missiology , the Islamic countries developed their own university discipline in the second half of the 20th century, which deals with the principles and strategies of the Daʿwa. The first academic institution to explicitly place the daʿwa at the center of its self-image was the Islamic University of Medina, founded in 1961 . At the Egyptian al-Azhar University a separate "Faculty for Islamic Daʿwa" ( kullīyat ad-daʿwa al-islāmīya ) was founded in 1978 , at which 1,400 students were enrolled in 1992. Such Daʿwa faculties were later established at many other universities, such as al-Quds University in Jerusalem.

Various academic Daʿwa conferences were also held. The first international Daʿwa conference was hosted by Islamic University in Medina in February 1977. The legal scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi , who worked in Qatar , wrote a treatise on this occasion entitled Ṯaqāfat ad-dāʿiya ("The Formation of Dāʿiya"). In it he dealt with the various educational requirements that a devout Muslim must have in order to be able to do successful missionary work.

Another important international Daʿwa conference was held in Mecca in October 1987. The aim of the conference, which was organized by the Islamic World League, was to discuss the future of the Daʿwa and its importance for the development of the Islamic world. The conference papers were published in 1989 in London.

Daʿwa in western countries

The Madina Mosque in Levenshulme near Manchester, a facility of the UK Islamic Mission

One of the first Da'wa organizations in Western countries was in 1963 by supporters of Pakistan's Jamaat-i Islami , founded UK Islamic Mission in London. Maududi , the founder of Jamaat-i Islami, suggested that Muslims living in Britain should be “ambassadors of Islam” but advocated a gentle, indirect Daʿwa strategy. Ismail al-Faruqi , who gave a speech at the annual conference of the UK Islamic Mission in 1985, in which he dealt specifically with strategies for the spread of Islam in the West, took a similar position . He saw the family as the most effective tool for Daʿwa in the West and urged Muslims to invite a non-Muslim home every week in order to familiarize him with Islamic values. The speech was published in 1986 by the UK Islamic Mission.

Khurram Murad , who became director of the Islamic Foundation in Leicester in 1978 , published a book in 1986 specifically on Daʿwa among non-Muslims in the West. In it he described that the most important goal in Daʿwa is not to win a dispute, but to win and activate a heart.

literature

Islamic Daʿwa literature

Studies

  • Dirk Bakker: “Daʿwah, missionary mobilization of Islam in Indonesia” in Evangelische Missions-Zeitschrift 26 (1969) 121-136.
  • Marius Canard: Art. "Daʿwa" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. II, 168-170.
  • Abbas Hamdani: "Evolution of the Organizational Structure of the Fatimi Daʿwah" in Arabian Studies 3 (1976) 85-114.
  • Hanspeter Mattes: The internal and external mission of Libya. Mainz 1986.
  • René Otayek: Le radicalisme islamique au sud du Sahara. Da'wa , arabization et critique de l'Occident . Karthala, Paris, 1993. ( preview on GoogleBooks )
  • Larry Poston: Islamic Daʿwah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam. Oxford 1992.
  • Egdunas Račius: Muslim missionary activities between religion and politics: the multiple nature of the Islamic daʿwa. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, 2004.
  • Hansjörg Schmid, Ayşe Başol-Gürdal, Anja Middelbeck-Varwick , Bülent Ucar (eds.): Testimony, invitation, conversion. Mission in Christianity and Islam . (= Theological Forum Christianity-Islam 2010), Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2322-8 .
  • Paul E. Walker: Art. “Daʿwah. Qurʾānic Concepts “in John L. Esposito (ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World . 6 Vols. Oxford 2009. Vol. II, pp. 32-36.
  • Nina Wiedl: Da'wa - The call to Islam in Europe. Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiler 2008, ISBN 3899302281 .
  • Henning Wrogemann : Missionary Islam and social dialogue. A study on the rationale and practice of the call to Islam. Frankfurt / Main 2006.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Hans Wehr: Arabic dictionary for the written language of the present . Harrasowitz Verlag, 1985. p. 392
  2. ↑ See Paret's translation of the relevant verse.
  3. ↑ See his story of the Qoran. Vol. 1: About the origin of the Qoran . Leipzig 1909. p. 195.
  4. ↑ See Josef van Ess : Theology and Society in the 2nd and 3rd Century Hijra. A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam. 6 vols. Berlin-New York 1991–1997. Vol. II, pp. 310-316.
  5. ↑ Cf. van Ess 248-253.
  6. ↑ See Moshe Sharon: Black banners from the East . Jerusalem 1983.
  7. ↑ See Heinz Halm: Die Schia . Darmstadt 1988. pp. 198-205.
  8. ↑ See Halm 211f and Hamdani.
  9. ↑ See Halm 219–224.
  10. ↑ See Halm 225–232.
  11. ↑ Cf. Ignaz Goldziher: The directions of the Islamic interpretation of the Koran . Leiden 1920. pp. 344f.
  12. ↑ On the dating cf. Israel Gershoni et al. James Jankowski: Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945 . Cambridge 1995, p. 235.
  13. ↑ See http://www.2muslims.com/directory/Detailed/227082.shtml#our_islam
  14. ↑ Cf. Daʿwatu-nā in ar-Rasā'il ath-thalāth . Cairo: Dār aṭ-ṭibāʿa wa-n-našr around 1977. http://www.2muslims.com/directory/Detailed/227082.shtml#methods (here the gramophone is not translated).
  15. ↑ Cf. Wrogemann 106f.
  16. ↑ See Schulze: Islamic Internationalism . 1990, pp. 204f.
  17. ↑ See Schulze: Islamic Internationalism . 1990, pp. 213-265.
  18. ↑ See Mattes on this.
  19. ↑ See Nicole Grandin: Al-Merkaz al-islami al-ifriqi biʿl-Khartoum. La République du Soudan et la propagation de l'Islam en Afrique Noire (1977-1991) . In: Otayek 97-120.
  20. ↑ See Marie Miran: Islam, histoire et modernité en Côte d'Ivoire . Karthala, Paris, 2006. pp. 387-389.
  21. ↑ See Reinhard Schulze: Islamic Internationalism in the 20th Century. Research on the history of the Islamic World League . Leiden 1990, p. 158.
  22. ↑ See Malika Zeghal: Gardiens de l'Islam. Les oulémas d'al Azhar dans l'Égypte contemporaine. Paris 1996. p. 175.
  23. ↑ Cf. al-Qaraḍāwī: Ṯaqāfat ad-dāʿiya . Muʾassasat ar-Risāla, Beirut, 1978. p. 7.
  24. ↑ Beyond frontiers: Islam and contemporary needs. International Islamic Conference Dawa and Development of the Muslim World; the future perspective; 17-21 Safar 1408 / 11-15 October 1987. Ed. Merryl Wyn Davies. Mansell, London 1989.
  25. ↑ See Humayun Ansari: The Infidel within. Muslims in Britain since 1800. Hurst & Company, London, 2004. p. 349.
  26. ↑ See Ali Köse: Conversion to Islam. A Study of Native British Converts. Kegan Paul International, London & New York, 1996. p. 26.
  27. ↑ See Köse: Conversion to Islam. 1996. p. 25.
  28. ↑ See Köse: Conversion to Islam. 1996. p. 29 f.