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daawa (Arabic: invitation, religious call,

summons) (also dawa, Persian dawat, or

Indonesian/Malaysian dakwah)

Daawa is a term that has acquired a number of

meanings in the history of Islam, but it is mainly

thought of as religious outreach for purposes of

conversion or bringing lapsed Muslims back into

the faith. In the qUran, it is God’s invitation to

humans to worship and believe in him (Q 14:10;

10:25) and humans’ calling upon God to hear

their prayers (Q 14:33; 7:180). In the Quranic

view, the prophets are the ones who effectively

transmit God’s call to their peoples to sway them

from praying to false gods or idols and to guide

them on the monotheistic path to salvation.

Prophets and others who undertake the challeng-

ing task of conveying God’s daawa are called dais

(“inviters” or “summoners”). Moreover, according

to the Quran, the whole community of believers

is charged with “calling to goodness, commanding

the right and forbidding the wrong” (Q 3:104). In

other contexts, Muslims used the word daawa as

a synonym for the call to prayer (adhan) and as an

alternate name for the first chapter of the Quran,

the Fatiha (Q 1), which is a verbal prayer for

God’s assistance, guidance, and mercy.

During the eighth century, leaders of the

Abbasid movement in iraq and iran gave daawa

an overt political meaning by making it a form of

religious propaganda. They called upon faithful

Muslims to help them bring the community back

to the “true” Islam by overthrowing the Umayyad

caliphate in syria. Their efforts proved success-

ful; they ended Umayyad rule and created the

abbasid caliphate (750–1258) in baghdad. At

about the same time as the Abbasid movement,

early Shii groups, several of which had supported

the Abbasids until the Abbasids turned against

them, called upon Muslims to accept the authority

of their imams, the descendants of Muhammad’s

family (ahl al-bayt) whom the Shia believed to be

the divinely chosen leaders of the Muslim com-

munity. The Ismailis, a minority sect of the Shia,

used daawa to challenge the claims of their rivals,

the tWelve-imam shia, undermine Sunni rulers,

and win support for their own leaders, whom they

believed to be divinely guided and possessors of

secret knowledge (batin) from God. The Ismaili

rulers of the Fatimid dynasty (909–1171) in

North Africa and egypt organized a daawa move-

ment to promote their claims to divine authority

and to oppose the Abbasid Caliphate with one

of their own. Their dais (missionaries) were sent

from cairo to far reaches of the dar al-islam,

where they spread Ismaili doctrines publicly and

covertly, recruiting support for the imams. The

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