Witness Unto Mankind

by Sayyid Abul Al'a Maududi

Translated and edited by Khurram Murad Witness to the Truth
The Islamic Foundation

Praise and Salutations
Our Message
The Purpose and Duty of the Muslim Ummah
Responsibilities and Duties
The Only Purpose of Existence
Witness to the Truth
Nature and Importance
Responsibility of the Ummah
How Should We Witness to the Truth?
Word-witness
Act-witness
The Islamic State
Where Do we Stand?
Our Word-witness
Our Act-witness
And With What Consequences!
Our Punishment
In This World
Punishment in the World-to-Come
What is Our Real Problem?
Pseudo Problems
Our Real Problem

Praise and Salutations

All praise be to God who alone is the Creator, Master and Sovereign of the universe. It is He who rules over it with perfect wisdom, absolute power and infinite mercy. He who has created man, endowed him with knowledge and reason, made him His vicegerent on earth, and has sent His Books and Messengers to guide him.

May God bless all those righteous and noble servants of His who were appointed to teach man how to live as true human beings and who made man aware of the real purpose of his life, and showed him the right way to live in this world. Whatever measure of true guidance, morality, piety, and selflessness that the world possesses today, it owes to the teachings of these servants of God, peace be upon them. This is a debt that can never be sufficiently repaid.

Our Message

Brothers and friends, we usually divide our meetings into two parts. In one part, we review, among ourselves, our activities and discuss plans for their advancement. The other part we devote to conveying our message to the people of the area where we hold our meeting. We have, thus, asked you to join us in this meeting so that we may explain our message to you.

On the one hand our message is addressed to Muslims, and on the other hand to all those human beings who are outside the fold of Islam. It is unfortunate, however, that I do not see here today people belonging to the second category. Our past mistakes and present errors are responsible for alienating a great many people from us. Therefore, we hardly ever find the opportunity either to draw them near to us or draw near to them, so that we may communicate to them the message sent by God, in whom we all believe, through His Messengers for the guidance of us all. Since we do not have any non-Muslims present amongst us, I shall only concentrate upon that part of our message which is meant for Muslims.