Page 30 - The Vision of Islam

The Essence of Religion

Mu‘adh ibn Jabal to Yemen to call people to Islam, he told Mu‘adh
that he would meet a number of people of the Book, and that he
should first explain to them the article of faith i.e., the concept
of the oneness of God, and when they had accepted this, then he
should gradually teach them how to say prayers and observe other
commands.
‘Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas relates that the Prophet said to Muadh
ibn Jabal, before sending him on a dawah mission to Yemen: “You
are going to a nation who are People of the Book. When you
reach there, first ask them to testify to the oneness of God and to
Muhammad being His messenger. When they have accepted this,
tell them further that God has ordained that they worship five
times a day. After they have accepted this also, explain to them that
God has made almsgiving obligatory and this zakat will be taken
from their rich and distributed among their poor. When they agree
to that also, you should refrain from showing any interest in their
most valued possessions.” (Bukhari)
That is why the prophets were given only basic teachings at
the initial stage, so that they propagated these teachings for long
periods. Thereafter, such detailed instructions were revealed as
were consistent with the prevailing circumstances. It has never
happened that a prophet has introduced in the first stages of Dawah
work the whole social and cultural system to any community, and
demanded that they establish an Islamic state immediately or
enforce all Islamic laws in all spheres of life.
Although all of the commandments, in the above mentioned
Hadith, had already been revealed, the Prophet advised the da‘i not
to impart all of them to the mad‘u at the same time, but rather to
put them to the people gradually, according to their circumstances.
This reveals the fact that just as the commandments were originally
sent by God gradually in instalments, even now it is desirable that
they be presented with gradualness. The order of their revelation
tells us that they are meant to be presented to people step by
step at all times. It would be wrong to say that although they
were originally revealed gradually, after the completion of their
revelation, the policy of gradualness had been discarded, and that
they should now be presented all at one time in their entirety.
29