Education Is Hidaayah & Living Is Da‘wah

We search for certain things – almost as a habit – away from their actual locations like the proverbial needle of Mulla Nasruddin. Hidaayah and da‘wah are two such things. For instance, when we think of hidaayah then we don’t think of the classrooms. Then we don’t look at our educational institutions with this objective in view. If hidaayah is not the purpose then why we are teaching is beyond comprehension. We do not think that the main place where this should begin is our classrooms. We are searching for the avenues of hidaayah outside classrooms in the same manner as we think that leaders will come from outside the classrooms. And we forget that the classrooms are a place for both.


Ever since I started hearing about ‘da‘wah’ I have been feeling as if something vital was missing. It occurs to me now that it is yet another manifestation of our love for the short-cuts. Giving da‘wah almost always presupposes that we should ‘give’ it to others and maybe in a remote place – farther away from where we actually live. It always indicates switching into a da‘wah mode occasionally and then coming out of it after the act of giving da‘wah is over. It always indicates that the ‘da‘wah’ was being given for a certain amount of time on the stage and now the time and the session is over. Now we will come back to this important activity after a certain period of time.


We have to realize it to the core that Islam is about engagement with life. It is about being in the think of it and not on its periphery and margins. Certain terms in our case are escapism by other means. They are like saying “we cannot stand the heat of mainstream life” and “we are happier watching the drama from a safe distance”. As has been argued earlier, Islam (i.e. the beautiful principles of life) is to be lived. But this is the longest route. So we start giving da‘wah in the remotest parts of the country and the world. For real hidaayah and da‘wah, therefore, all our Institutions and Organizations should adopt and align themselves with the following VISION: The students coming out of our Colleges and Universities should have Qur’an in the right hand, most modern scientific and technological advancements in the left hand and the crown of Laa Ilaah on the forehead. So that the Muslims regain the same glorious status of founders and promoters of science and technology as they did during the ascendance of their civilization. The latter part of the VISION is essential for the Believers to become the givers and benefactors of humanity. Otherwise, the culture of complaining and merely asking (against the spirit of the Book) will continue to exist. This in the best interest of mankind though it sounds paradoxical – at the moment.


An eye opener here is the fact that with each passing day the relevance of the Aligarh Movement (the giver of this VISION) is increasing in direct proportion to the irrelevance of other Institutions and Organizations. There is no denying the fact that the Aligarh Movement has not been able to place the Book in the Right Hand. This is not a small a problem. However, keeping the future requirements in view we need to find out who is gravitating towards whom. Let us keep this trend in view and foresee the situation in the next 50 years. The relevance of the Aligarh Movement will keep increasing and the relevance of other ideologies will go on diminishing. We should learn from history for our present and future – which is the sole purpose of history.


We should work towards cross-fertilization of the two streams of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ learning as early as possible. Without this the perspectives will remain distorted and partial and the whole picture will elude us. If we agree on this at the conceptual level then the rest of the things will follow. The noble objectives that we want to achieve will be obtained through knowledge. The world is moving towards knowledge economy and the individual is getting increasingly empowered, to the extent that the role of Governments might increasingly shrink, I guess. We need to introspect more on this whole subject and come to terms with the fact that the longest is the shortest – for hidaayah and da‘wah, too.

BY: Dr. Waseem Ahmed Malik