Assalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh
Bismillahir- Rahmanir-Rahim
1. Opening
Friends who are blessed by Allah, We must realize an important note in the dynamics of daʿwah today: The modern Muslim ummah has become far more critical. They can no longer be moved merely by strings of beautiful, fiery words from the pulpit. The ummah today learns using their eyes—that is, by seeing evidence of behavior—not merely using their ears to hear theory.Therefore, the ummah’s need for sincere, active, and disciplined preachers or dāʿīs who practice their knowledge is far more urgent than their need for people who merely wrestle with theoretical fiqh without concrete example. The ummah longs for a religion that is grounded in character, not one that floats in debates.
Psychologically and sociologically, modern society experiences information overload. When everyone can access religious texts through their gadgets, the value of verbal information declines, while the value of visual exemplarity [behavioral modeling] becomes extremely precious. From the very beginning, Islam has placed behavioral exemplarity as the most scientific and soul-soothing method of daʿwah, because it directly touches the center of human consciousness without the barrier of rhetoric.Allah SWT delivers a very profound rebuke to those who are only good at theorizing but whose behavior contradicts it:
كَبُرَ مَقْتًا عِندَ اللَّهِ أَن تَقُولُوا مَا لَا تَفْعَلُونَ
“Greatly hateful in the sight of Allah is that you say what you do not do.”
[QS. Aṣ-Ṣaff: 3]
The world today does not lack smart people, but it lacks people who are honest with their knowledge. Rasulullah ﷺ reminded us about the importance of being a dāʿī who practices his knowledge so as not to become among the losers in the Hereafter, through his saying:
يُجَاءُ بِالرَّجُلِ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ فَيُلْقَى فِي النَّارِ، فَتَنْدَلِقُ أَقْتَابُهُ فِي النَّارِ، فَيَدُورُ كَمَا يَدُورُ الْحِمَارُ بِرَحَاهُ، فَيَجْتَمِعُ أَهْلُ النَّارِ عَلَيْهِ فَيَقُولُونَ: أَيْ فُلَانُ مَا شَأْنُكَ؟ أَلَيْسَ كُنْتَ تَأْمُرُنَا بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَتَنْهَانَا عَنِ الْمُنْكَرِ؟ قَالَ: كُنْتُ آمُرُكُمْ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَلَا آتِيهِ، وَأَنْهَاكُمْ عَنِ الْمُنْكَرِ وَآتِيهِ
“A man will be brought on the Day of Judgment and thrown into the Fire, and his intestines will spill out in the Fire. He will go around as a donkey goes around a millstone. The inhabitants of the Fire will gather around him and say, ‘O so-and-so, what happened to you? Did you not use to command us to do good and forbid us from evil?’ He will say, ‘I used to command you to do good but I did not do it myself, and I used to forbid you from evil but I committed it myself.’”[HR. Bukhārī and Muslim]
2. Lessons and Message
Let us reflect on a true, heart-rending story about the ummah’s longing for sincerity. In a post-disaster area where the community had lost their homes and school facilities, a group came carrying loudspeakers. They stood on an emergency stage and delivered a long lecture on the evidences of patience, the virtues of tawakkul, and the reward of enduring trials. Yet the people listened with blank, cold stares—some even wept in sadness because they felt hungry and abandoned without any real solution. At the same time, a quiet dāʿī arrived. He did not go up on stage and did not hold a microphone. In simple clothes, he immediately went down into the mud, carried timbers from the rubble, helped clear the debris of the destroyed madrasah, and fed starving orphans with his own hands until he trembled from exhaustion. The moment they saw the real action of that dāʿī_—drenched in sweat and tears of sincerity—the community’s tension instantly melted. They wept with emotion, then spontaneously rose together to clean their village without needing to be ordered again. The real action of one _dāʿī who disciplinedly practiced his knowledge healed the mental wounds of the ummah—far more powerfully than a thousand strings of theoretical sermons from a stage.
So we can understand this shift in how the modern ummah learns with an intelligent smile, let us use an analogy about “Online Fitness Instructors vs. Real Athletes.”
Imagine you want to learn how to get your body fit and athletic. Then you watch a video on social media featuring a man—let’s call him Leman. Leman wears a neat suit, sits on a comfy chair while eating potato chips and drinking sweet soda. In front of the camera, Leman lectures for two hours: “Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to be healthy, you must do 50 push-ups a day! You must jog at dawn! You must be disciplined and avoid oily food!” But Leman’s own belly, sorry to say, keeps advancing forward like a truck bumper day by day. Would you feel motivated to follow Leman’s orders? Of course not! You’d probably comment, “Come on, Leman… you’re telling us to run while you’re lying down—how can we believe you ! ”Now, compare that to seeing another instructor who doesn’t talk much. He turns on the camera, wears workout clothes, then does push-ups, drenched in sweat, and shows his muscles that were actually built from years of discipline. Without him having to shout orders at you, your eyes that see that proof of behavior will automatically move you to get out of bed and start exercising!
Funny and convicting to our inner selves, isn’t it? The Muslim ummah today is exactly like those fitness viewers. They are fed up hearing “spiritual Lemans” who are great at preaching about purity of heart on social media, yet in real life love showing off luxury, are harsh to others, and thirst for praise. The ummah doesn’t need their ears closed with theory; the ummah wants their eyes opened by seeing a dāʿī whose body and character actually reflect the contents of the Qur’an in reality .
3. Conclusion & Closing
Friends, the profound moral message from today’s important note is a major reflection for all of us, especially for those who carry the task of daʿwah: let us shift our religious style from the level of hearing to the level of seeing. Stop being people who are only busy producing theoretical fiqh discourse, while the environment around us longs for the real application of those Islamic values.If you post religious content on social media, make sure that content has first materialized in your daily behavior at home and in society. Be a sincere, active, and disciplined caller. When the ummah sees that the honesty, humility, justice, and compassion we talk about are something we truly live out in daily life, then the authority of daʿwah will stand tall again, and human hearts will flock toward the pleasure of Allah SWT.
May Allah SWT keep us away from the disease of a tongue that is not aligned with actions, and count us among the sincere callers who can inspire the ummah with the beauty of real character
. والله أعلم بالصواب
الحمد لله رب العالمين
Wassalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.
Abu Sultan Al-Qadrie
