As much as we the Ahl Al Sunnah want to complain about the common perception in the West that groups like ISIS or the Kings of SA are Sunnis, we have to take responsibility for the fact that we have through our own negligence, despite our superior numbers and the weight of evidence being on our side, allowed the Wahhabis to dominate the field of dawah in the west, allowed them to dominate in the field of Muslim political representation, in academia, you name it, they have cornered the market in it, but only due to our negligence and our insular approach. To this day our Masajid for the most part are still places which are serving primarily only single ethnic communities in their native languages, and are not easy places for those from other traditionally Muslim communities let alone new converts to access assistance, guidance and services. Unfortunately I see little change in the attitude of the younger generation of Sunni Ulema, there is a movement into using English increasingly as a medium, but very little in trying to reach out to the world beyond the ethnic communities they belong to. The Manifest Victory mentioned in Surah Al Fath- was not the victory following a battle, but the signing of a treaty of peace, which enabled the Muslims to peacefully propagate their message among the non-Muslims of the Arabian peninsula. It was during these few years of peace that more people converted to Islam than had in the many years that had preceded it. Now whilst this certainly isnt a time of peace between the western world and the Muslim world, we as citizens in the west do enjoy the ability to propagate our faith freely, yet for the most part we are keeping our heads down, and sitting on our hands. As long as we continue on this course, we have no right to complain. Finally our dawah should not start from the point of refuting Wahhabism, but rather from a point of presenting Islam as a holistic way of life for everyone to benefit from, there is a reason that the Wahhabi dawah has such limited success, because it is intellectually weak and spiritually void. Just imagine how people would react to the real message of Islam.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 12:07:40 +0000