Dawa: The Islamic Strategy for Reshaping the Modern World
Published in the United States by Isaac Publishing
6729 Curran Street, McLean, Virginia 22101
Copyright 2015 Patrick Sookhdeo
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by means electronic, photocopy or recording without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in brief quotations in written reviews.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014951766
ISBN: 978-0-9892905-8-6
Printed in the United States of America
Isaac Publishing has sought to contact copyright holders to obtain permission for diagrams used in this book. We apologise for any errors or omissions. We will be grateful for any further information regarding copyright and will gladly acknowledge it in future printings.
Muhammad Rashid Rida
The aim of the Islamic movement is to bring about somewhere in the world a new society wholeheartedly committed to the teachings of Islam in their totality and striving to abide by those teachings in its government, political, economic and social organizations, its relation with other states, its educational system and moral values and all other aspects of its way of life. Our organized and gradual effort which shall culminate in the realization of that society is the process of Islamization.
Jaafar Sheikh Idris
Islamisation has its own logic. It appropriates more and more space and leaves no room for societies to grow organically and in synch with the rest of the world. Secular culture is a victim and women bear the brunt of this.
Jugnu Mohsin
Islam wishes to do away with all states and governments anywhere which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam Islam requires the earth not just a portion, but the entire planet.
Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi
the Kuffar [unbelievers, non-Muslims] are not allowed to establish a ruling system on earth because the earth belongs to Allah and only his righteous slaves are allowed to inherit it.
Muhammad Qasim
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal
CONTENTS
A NOTE ON THE SPELLING OF ARABIC WORDS
Arabic words are spelled in a variety of ways when transliterated into lan- guages that use other scripts. This book mostly uses the shortest and simplest English spellings. For example, the Arabic word for Islamic mission is written in this book as dawa. It is exactly the same word that other authors writing in English may spell as dawah or dawa or dawah or daawa or daawah. The Arabic term stayed the same when it moved into Turkish, but in Urdu it has become dawat and in the Malaysian language dakwah.
This rule also applies to names of people, places and organisations. For example, Mecca is spelled by some authors as Makka or other variations.
A NOTE ON QURANIC REFERENCES
Quranic references are given as the sura (chapter) number followed by the number of the verse within the sura. All are from A. Yusuf Alis The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1975) unless otherwise stated. Verse numbers may vary slightly between different translations of the Quran, so if using another version it may be necessary to search in the verses just before or just after the number given here to find the verse cited.
T he meeting of Islam and modern liberal societies is perhaps the most important story of our time. Yet despite eruptions of political and media interest in the matter (when someone is beheaded, or bombs detonated in some Western capital) there appears to be little or no will or desire to find out what is happening or why. Despite growing public concern, the posture of Western governments and much of the media remains an adamant refusal to connect the dots and a misguided, if understandable, desire simply to wish for the best.
Thirteen years ago, it might have been possible to excuse a widespread ignorance about the issues under discussion in this book. If the President of the United States, or Prime Minister of Great Britain, had been asked in the aftermath of 9/11 whether they could explain any principles of sharia law, Islamic banking or apostasy laws in Islam we might have forgiven their floundering. But all these years later, such an ignorance of basic Islamic doctrines and essential Islamic history is unforgivable. It is possible of course that our political leaders do now understand these issues. But if they do then it is curious that they continue to act as though they do not, giving in time and again to the most abrasive forms of Islam, conceding these to be the centreground and thus accomplishing the significant double-disaster of appeasing the radicals within Islam and cutting the legs from under any progressives.
Patrick Sookhdeos work and this new work in particular stands as a powerful warning and corrective to these trends of wilful blindness. It explains why people act as they act, what propels them and what they are hoping to achieve. He performs this task not as a polemicist or politician, but as a historian, a scholar and somebody deeply committed to explaining the truth.
Anybody who seeks to learn about Islam and in particular about its interactions with other faiths and cultures has one author they must turn to first: Patrick Sookhdeo. It is not often that one can say this about a book, but the more people who read this book the safer in the long-term our societies will be.
Douglas Murray
July 2014
Douglas Murray is an award-winning journalist and author, associate member of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank and associate editor of The Spectator magazine.
I slam is a missionary religion. Its followers are required to try to teach their beliefs to others, in order to convince them and persuade them to convert. In this respect, Islam resembles another world religion, Christianity, and also a number of groups that have grown out of those two religions, such as the Ahmadiyyas, Jehovahs Witnesses and Mormons.
Such freedom of expression is a basic human right, as is the freedom to change ones religion. These freedoms are set out in Articles 19 and 18 respectively of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
