بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
A Cry to the Dawah Carriers
"Where have you been all this time?!"
(Translated)
In the crush of life and the heedlessness of societies, one single word remains able to shake mountains, ignite the conscience, and awaken the spirit of accountability in the hearts of the Ummah of Islam. It is a word that came from the mouths of those whose bodies were worn by torture and whose frames were ground by injustice in the dungeons of tyrants: “Where have you been all this time?!” It was said by one of those released from the prisons of the fugitive Bashar al-Assad, those who tasted calamities and whose years were extinguished behind bars; when he met some who had been freed, he did not ask about the number of years in prison, rather he shouted in his face: “Where were you? Where have you been all this time? Why did you not release us while we were being buried alive?”
These words reproached me greatly as I felt my shortcoming toward all the wronged on the earth. Islam came as mercy for the people to bring them out from the worship of servants to the worship of the Lord of the servants. Here there is no escape from accountability, no room for apology, no way out of blame. So where lies the problem?
And here I repeat the same word in the face of the carriers of the call who carry the radical solution to the Ummah’s problems, especially when I knew the details of the revival project they carry. I said it to one of the carriers of the call: “Where have you been all this time?”
And now I have vowed myself to bear the concern of the return of Islam to the reality of life and to work with those who work on this great burden. I ask: Did we convey the Message as we should? Did we reach the oppressed? Did we exert ourselves in carrying the Da‘wah as Allah commanded us?
We do not carry a leisure call, nor a shallow reform project. We carry a matter of life or death. We carry the full message of Islam. We carry the cure for mankind. We carry Allah’s promise of khilafah, and we carry the deliverance of people from the hell of oppression, ignorance and enslavement.
So whoever is negligent in conveying has neglected the trust, and whoever selects whom he invites while abandoning the weak has betrayed the purity of the Message.
Imagine the imprisoned for years, prisoners of ignorance, prisoners of misleading media, prisoners of Western culture, prisoners of tyrannical regimes, prisoners of daily needs that have exhausted them so that they no longer pay attention to their religion, prisoners of distraction and following sports, celebrities and lusts...
When the Da‘wah reaches them they will ask nothing but: “Why did your call not reach us?!” Yes, many people today are imprisoned without being behind bars, and all of them await someone to knock on their doors and wake them, to bring them Islam as Allah revealed it — not Islam reduced to rituals only, but the saving Islam that frees the human being from all forms of servitude, establishes justice, spreads goodness, and lights the way.
“Where have you been all this time?!” is not merely a word, but a slap to every slacker, and an alarm to every carrier of the call whose resolve has weakened amid this bad reality to push us to move, to deliver the truth, to tear down the walls between us and the people, to carry the light into the deepest prisons on earth, to join night with day; for the one silent about the Da‘wah, negligent in conveying, is a partner in the continued imprisonment of people.
And whoever knows that Islam contains deliverance, and then does not deliver it, carries the burden for everyone who remained in his darkness.
O dawah carriers, rise up, gird your resolve; do not wait for the moment when you will be asked “Where were you?” be the answer before you are asked. Be there where the oppression is, where ignorance is, where suffering is; for there are servants of Allah who await the voice of truth. Will we fail them? The zealous among you doubles the effort, and the slow in progress will catch up with the caravan. O Allah, do not make us of the negligent.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Hussam al-Idrisi – Wilayah Yemen