The Da’wah To Islam by Sheikh Ahmad Mahmoud

How strange it is that we find people working to establish Islam without focusing their efforts to establish the Islamic State.

More surprising still is that one finds amongst Muslims those who look upon the Islamic State and the work to re-establish it as an ordinary Shar’ee rule, which is not given preference or precedence over anything else.

Even more surprising is that you will find amongst the Muslims those who are working to apply the Shar’ee rules through the existing regimes, at the expense of working to establish the Islamic State, which will undertake what the Shar’a has entrusted it with, of establishing the rules of Islam.

Thus, we are able to conclude that the most important and indispensable obligation from amongst the collective obligations is the work to establish the Islamic State, which rules by what Allah 􀀬 has revealed. This work is being undertaken today by a section of the Muslims. However, this section has not met the sufficiency, because the State has still not been established. As a result, this collective obligation has become similar to the individual obligation as mentioned previously, ie every Muslim is now required to work according to his ability to establish the Islamic state.

Consequently, the most precise and correct emulation of the Rasool of Allah 􀁕 is that the Muslim should study the individual obligations ordained by Allah 􀀬. He should also study the individual forbidden actions that have been prohibited by Allah 􀀬. Then he should look to the collective obligations that Allah has commanded to be established, so that he undertakes them or participates in their performance, according to his ability. After study, Allah has guided us to the most important collective duty, which is the work to establish the Islamic State, which is the method to establish the majority of the Islamic rules, whether individual or collective.

In this way, the Muslim would have prepared himself for the Day of Reckoning, when he will be asked about what he has done. This is because he undertook the individual obligations, and refrained from the individual forbidden acts. He also undertook the foremost collective duty, through whose establishment the sin of all the related obligations are removed from him, which are many. In this manner the Muslim will have held on to the truth from all sides. Thus, he has undertaken that which will establish Islam in himself as an individual. He has also undertaken that which will establish Islam in society. If anything else had not been undertaken yet, they would be a few of the collective obligations. The nature of undertaking such obligations will be personal and not collective, such as making du’a for the one who sneezes and performing the funeral prayer.