Supporting the Newcomers to Islam

The third point to note is that the Muslim community must be supportive of its new members. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) helped Salmān free himself from slavery, and he requested the Ṣaḥābah to pitch in and participate. For Muslims living in the West, this becomes a duty: to take care of the needs of the newcomers to the religion — many times these needs are financial, and they need to be helped — and this is part of daʿwah. Daʿwah is not only words, which are free to give and cost nothing — it also means being responsible for the people who join in its ranks.

Many of the early Muslims were people who were in need. Bilāl (may Allah be pleased with him) was freed by Abū Bakr; many of the early Muslims were slaves who were in need of a lot of financial help, because they were thrown away by their masters. Or you would have, for example, someone like Muṣʿab ibn ʿUmayr, who came from a very wealthy family, but his mother refused to give him anything after he became Muslim. So these members are in need of support in their initial stages, and the risk is that if they don't get help in those critical stages, they could apostatise.

A study conducted in America found that a significant number of reverts end up leaving Islam — a large number, though the exact figure is not given here, but a great many leave Islam because of the difficulties that they face. First of all, they're stripped — many of them are stripped from their social belonging, their social life; their families neglect them, their friends leave them, so they are in need of a social belonging, they have to have a new association. Number two, many of them also come with dire financial needs, and if these needs go unmet — a human being is a human being. The hadith about hurrying to do good deeds before seven things could happen names al-faqr al-munsī among them, poverty that makes a person forget: if the stomach is empty, everything else is forgotten. A person who is hungry cannot easily think about spirituality and learning ʿilm, knowledge — such a person's first need is to be fed.

These are all part of the wider programme of daʿwah. Institutions are needed that can satisfy and fulfil the needs of the new Muslim, and that is part of the duty of Muslims living in non-Muslim societies where there are people who are embracing Islam.