Dawah

Da‘wah or Dawah () usually denotes the preaching of Islam. Da‘wah literally means "issuing a summons" or "making an invitation", being the active participle of a verb meaning variously "to summon" or "to invite" (whose triconsonantal root is ). A Muslim who practices da‘wah, either as a religious worker or in a volunteer community effort, is called a dā‘ī, plural du‘āt. A dā‘ī is thus a person who invites people to understand Islam through a dialogical process, and may be categorized in some cases as the Islamic equivalent of a missionary, as one who invites people to the faith, to the prayer, or to Islamic life.

Early Islam

In the Qur'ān, the term da'wah has other senses. In Sura 30:25 of the Qur'ān, it denotes the call to the dead to rise on the Day of Judgment. When used in the Qur'ān it generally refers to Allah's invitation to live according to His will. Thus, when used in the first centuries of Islam, it increasingly referred to the content of that message and was sometimes used interchangeably with sharī‘a and dīn.

Da‘wah is also described as the duty to "actively encourage fellow Muslims in the pursuance of greater piety in all aspects of their lives," a definition which has become central to contemporary Islamic thought.Encyclopaedia of Islam

Purposes of Da‘wah

In Islamic theology, the purpose of...
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