Charecteristics Of The Called Part II

Listen Before You Speak

The second point is that we should strive to listen before we speak, to understand the other party and the other side, before we explain our points of view.

If we care about the person that we are giving da‘wah to and if we care whether they receive this message or not, then we should take care to listen to them. Many times when we are in a da‘wah situation, we are more interested in getting our point of view across than in hearing their opinions. Either because we have already heard their arguments before, and or we know their opinions are wrong anyway, so what is the point in listening to them? “Jesus is not the son of God because of reasons one, two, three, four, and five. Furthermore, the Bible says this and the Qur’aan says that, and this Christian scholar said this and Paul said that, etc., etc.” But the person you are telling that may not be interested in it because he does not believe that Jesus is literally the son of God, or he or she may be interested in some other issue. They may have some confusion about formal prayers in Islaam, why Muslims have to pray five times a day? So, we should take some time out and listen to the person before we begin our discussion, and allow further time during the discussion listen to them.

                                                     

Put Yourself in the Other Person’s Shoes

The third and final point is to put ourselves in their shoes. After discussions, people generally do not remember what was actually said, the particular words that were used, the precise issues which were discussed, but how it was said, they way the words were used and the issues presented. They do not really remember what we say, yet we spend so much time bringing points and explaining proofs, because this is the style we have developed in learning Islaam. Consequently, we want to use texts from the Qur’aan and hadeeth to prove our points. However, if we stop and think for a moment, we know that most of the non-Muslims whom we give da‘wah to do not understand this style of speaking. They do not understand, “Allaah said,” “The Messenger (pbuh) said,” “The Companions said,” “Shaykh so and so said,” etc.” They do not understand this type of terminology, nor its significance. So, we should put ourselves in their shoes and be gentle with them. We should try to be conscious of the impression we are giving them.

Let us try our level best to keep these three critical points in the back of our minds whenever we are in a discussion with somebody else.