The Next Phase of Western Dawah, Part 1

This is the first of a two-part series on the art of calling others to Islam in Western lands. This first part will identify and analyze what we at Taleef see as a major challenge to dawah efforts in the 21st Century by reflecting on the crisis in Gaza over the past year. God willing, part two will detail our vision for effective and meaningful dawah going forward by looking at the example of our Prophet ﷺ as well as some historical examples of successful spiritual revivals in the United States.

It is difficult to speak of the positive effects of a war. We are now a year out from October 7th, 2023, a day that kicked off Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza. Over the past year, Israel has dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, killed more than 41,000 people, and leveled well over half of the homes there. The extent of the loss is difficult to ascertain because the news cycle, along with our attention, has largely moved on. It is even more difficult to comprehend the level of human suffering there. However, as someone who works in the field of dawah, of calling people to Islam, it is also impossible not to recognize that the taqwa, or God-consciousness, of Gazan Muslims throughout this ordeal has opened a floodgate of conversion in the West.

Over the past year, we have heard from countless people embracing Islam that their interest in the religion began with a video from Gaza that they saw on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook. In each case, they were shocked to see people who had lost their families and homes praising God and speaking of the hereafter. They saw that the chaos and destruction around them did not yield despair or nihilism but patient hope in the divine. They recognized that they would not have the capacity to hold up so gracefully under similar circumstances. So they began asking themselves what the Gazan people possessed that they did not. We have seen this at Taleef again and again, and we know that this same trend has played out across the country at various mosques and community centers.

What is amazing about the videos that have come out of Gaza is that they contain no profound arguments for the truth of Islam nor, indeed, any explicit appeals to accept the religion. Go back and search through these videos and you will see no great rhetorical victories—only the praise and glorification of God. What they do show, however, is that Islam is of benefit in the midst of unimaginable suffering. Islam provides the Gazans with transcendent meaning that pierces through the chaos surrounding them. Their example has called more people to the religion than many of the explicit dawah efforts of the past few years. Demonstrations of the benefits of our faith in a chaotic and increasingly meaningless world are succeeding where rhetorical exercises are falling short. Those of us in the West who aim to see the ranks of our religion invigorated by our families, neighbors, and coworkers should take note of this and adapt.

When I first embraced Islam, I associated dawah with pamphlets, preachers on street corners, and the occasional billboard. Now, dawah has largely moved online. Instead of pamphlets, there are blogs like this one; instead of street corners, we have Youtube preachers. But the underlying method of calling people to Islam has not fundamentally changed. Dawah remains a mostly rhetorical exercise, meaning we use words to convince others of the value and truth of Islam. This will always remain a necessary enterprise. Without efforts to verbally spread the message of Islam, we will fail those who are ready to listen. However, this method of dawah stands upon the assumption that our words can and do convey meaning and truth to a general audience. Two decades into the 21st century, I believe there is now reason to doubt that assumption.

The simple reason for this is information fatigue. A 2009 study out of UC San Diego showed that the average American spends 11.8 hours per day consuming information across all forms of media, including the internet, TV, and radio. Altogether, that amounted to around 100,000 words per day and accounted for just less than half of our brains’ processing power. The 2009 findings showed a 5x increase in information consumption since 1986 and a 90x increase since 1940. And this was before the smartphone became a universal feature of everyday life. Information consumption, and fatigue, has certainly increased in the past 15 years, and it likely explains the increasing ill effects of shortened attention spans and diminished reading comprehension that any school teacher will be familiar with. It is safe to say that, in 2024, we are awash in a sea of information without a life raft.

The issue with this is not simply that dawah efforts must compete with other sources of information. The much larger problem is that we have become numb to new information. New information does not produce new understanding or meaning for our lives. Consider that, in 2021, the U.S. Military disclosed the existence of extraterrestrial aircraft flying through our skies. There was no public intrigue, scandal, or widespread panic. We did not question our place in the great scheme of the universe. All of the books and movies on this topic that predicted a new era of human life—broader horizons or a terrifying sense of cosmic insignificance—got it wrong. The American public, if they heard of this event at all, largely shrugged their shoulders and got on with life.

What does this mean for the existing model of dawah? It means that we may craft the most articulate and convincing explanations of Islam for a Western audience and it will still run the risk of simply adding to the cacophony of meaningless information available to the public. We may master the algorithms of YouTube and TikTok to get our messages in front of as many eyeballs as possible, only for it to be seen in an endless scroll of salacious content and ads. It means that what dawah efforts are truly up against is a wall of noise and a fundamental lack of meaning surrounding human hearts in the age of information overload.

This is where I believe the Gaza videos point the way to a more effective form of dawah. They show rather than tell. They cut through the wall of noise because, rather than adding yet more information to that wall, they point to a world of meaning that lies beyond it. This should tell us that what so many people truly need and crave, more than expositions of Islam—the propositions of our theology or instructions in worship—is the tranquility of heart that comes from knowing Allah. Such demonstrations need to become the first line of our dawah. In the final analysis, the destruction on display in the Gaza videos mirrored a psychological turmoil that most Westerners experienced. At the same time, the Gazans displayed a calmness of heart amidst that destruction that we do not experience. A simple “alhamdulillah,” said with the right intention and sincerity, demonstrates that Islam provides a genuine refuge from the increasing chaos, noise, and nihilism of this world—that, in the remembrance of God, hearts find rest.