Nizari Ismailis in Iran, known as the assassins,
also made extensive use of daawa on behalf of
their leaders. Today, some branches of the Ismailis
even call themselves “the Dawat.”
In the modern period, the meaning of reli-
gious outreach has undergone further develop-
ment. Daawa has become a keystone for many
contemporary Islamic organizations and institu-
tions in countries with Muslim majorities and also
in those where they are minorities. The collapse
of the last Islamicate empires (the Ottomans,
Safavids, and Mughals) after the 17th century,
combined with the onset of European colonial
domination in many Muslim lands, led Muslims
to use religious outreach in order to achieve
unity among themselves, to convert others, and
to engage non-Muslims in intercultural and inter-
faith dialogUe, especially in Europe and North
America. The Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II (r.
1876–1901) and other promoters of pan-islamism
used daawa in an attempt to unify all Muslims
under his religious and political authority. The
Ottoman Empire came to an end after World War
I, but the task of fostering Muslim unity through
daawa has been taken up anew by organizations
such as the mUslim World leagUe and the orga-
nization oF the islamic conFerence.
The increased Christian missions in Muslim
lands that accompanied European colonization
caused Muslims to organize their own mission-
ary activities in response. Since the early decades
of the 20th century, significant effort has been
dedicated to educating Muslims about the core
elements of their religion so as to encourage an
internal religious revival and help them contend
either with Christian missionaries or with the
influence of modern ideas and non-Islamic life-
styles and customs. The governments of saUdi
arabia, Kuwait, Libya, Egypt, and Pakistan have
created institutions to train imams and commu-
nity leaders, develop modern methods for propa-
gating Islam, hold conferences, and publish daawa
literature. Their outreach campaigns have been
conducted in African countries and the newly
independent Central Asian republics of the former
Soviet Union, as well as the Middle East and parts
of Asia. Activist Islamist organizations, such as the
mUslim brotherhood, also regard outreach as an
important part of their strategy for achieving their
religious and political goals. The daaWa party
oF iraq was created by Shii religious leaders to
oppose the spread of commUnism and secular Arab
nationalism. After the fall of saddam hUsayn’s
baath party government in 2003, it became one
of Iraq’s leading political parties. The tablighi
Jamaat, founded in 1927 in India, is a very popu-
lar nongovernmental Sunni missionary movement
that carries its message of simple religious piety
door-to-door in many parts of the world.
Like Christian missions, Muslim daawa orga-
nizations engage in charity and relief efforts.
Their mission also includes building neighbor-
hood mosques, opening medical clinics, and
establishing printing presses. Pious Women, many
of them veiled, have been increasingly visible in
such activities. Mosque-based organizations in
non-Muslim countries undertake daawa activities
in their communities to attract lapsed Muslims
and to educate non-Muslim leaders, officials, and
the wider public about Islam. Such efforts have
been particularly successful in pluralistic coun-
tries such as the United States. Muslim organiza-
tions have made extensive use of publications,
electronic media, and most recently the Internet
to conduct their outreach campaigns.
See also ahmadiyya; almsgiving; christianity
and islam; dar al-islam and dar al-harb; dialogUe;
edUcation; imam; madrasa; shiism.Further reading: Thomas Arnold, The Preaching of
Islam: A History of the Propagation of the Muslim Faith,
3d ed. (London: Luzac, 1935); Farhad Daftary, A Short
History of the Ismailis (Princeton, N.J.: Marcus Weiner,
1998); Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic
Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 2005), 57–78; Larry Poston,
Islamic Dawah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activ-
ity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam (Oxford:K 178 daawa