Page 120 - The Vision of Islam
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Calling People to Tre  ad the Path of God

             “Thus We have made you a middle nation, so that you may act
          as witnesses for mankind, and the messenger may be a witness for
          you.” (2:143/22:78)
             On the Day of Judgement when all human beings are gathered in
          the Divine Court, these people (da‘is) will be brought as witnesses
          before those to whom they had conveyed the divine message. This
          is expressed thus in the Bible:
             Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people
          be assembled. Who among them can declare this, and show us
          former things? Let them bring out their witnesses, that they may
          be justified; or let them hear and say, “It is truth.” “You are my
          witnesses,” says the Lord, “and My servant whom I have chosen,
          that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He.
          Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me.”
          (Isaiah, 43:9-10)
             The Prophet was so deeply involved in his responsibility as a
          witness to the Truth that God had to say:
             “It may be that you will destroy yourself with grief because they
          will not believe.” (26:3).
             Similarly, if Muslims were to become conscious of the fact
          that, after the Prophet, it is they who have been ordained to work
          in his stead, they would, with this realisation, be unable to sleep
          soundly at night or to rest properly during the day. For a duty of
          this nature implies that either they fulfil it, in which case they must
          bear witness to the Truth before all the nations of the world, or be
          apprehended as defaulters by God on the charge of having failed to
          inform people of what they will have to face in the next, eternal life.
          It would be correct to assume that if Muslims do not proclaim the
          Truth that God intended for the good of mankind, they definitely
          incur the risk of having the Quranic decree—such as was applied
          to the previous keepers of the divine books—applied likewise to
          them. As the Quran states:
             Those who conceal the evidence of the truth and the guidance
          We have revealed, after We have made them clear to people in the
          Scripture, will be rejected by God and so do others. But from those
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