Da'wa (the fiqh article: call, invitation and summons)

In fiqh, da'wa has three senses that the encyclopedia treats: conveying the religion and entering it, calling someone and asking them to come, and the food to which people are invited. ^{1 2} A call generally takes the ruling of what it summons to. ⁴

The Arabic word here means asking someone to enter the religion and hold to it. Da'wa can also name the religion itself, because its adherents call to it. The jurists, when they use the word alone, mean the call to the truth, that is, the Islamic call. ^{2 3}

Calling to God is a binding duty. The encyclopedia records a disagreement on whether it is an individual or a collective obligation, and refers that question to the entry on enjoining good. ³ The merits it lists are that God undertook the call through the prophets, that the caller passes on what the messengers brought, and that the one who is guided by a call earns a reward like his. ^{5 6}

The imam is the first to bear the call, because the office exists to guard the religion. The call is a collective duty on the Muslims according to the stronger view. Every Muslim man and woman is addressed by it, though only the learned are expected to explain its details; a layperson calls only to what he knows. ^{7 8 9}

Once the call reaches a person clearly, the proof is established against him. Those who never heard it are not held to the rules of the law. ^{10 7}

Dawat names the food to which people are invited. The Hanbali jurist al-Buhuti lists eleven named invitations, among them the wedding feast (walima), the feast of betrothal, the feast at circumcision, the feast at birth, the aqiqa on the seventh day, the feast on a house-building, the welcome of a returning traveller, and the feast of mourning, which is disliked. ^{11 12}

Answering an invitation is required for a wedding feast according to the majority, and recommended in other cases unless there is an excuse. The Malikis treat most other invitations as permitted. ^{13 14}

An invitation may be declined when the host is unjust, openly sinful or an innovator, when his income mixes lawful and unlawful, when there is forbidden conduct at the gathering, or when the invitation is repeated for three days or more. The encyclopedia also lists manners for the host and for the guest. ^{12 15}

A summons to a required act, to giving up a sin, to a judge's session or to testimony where it is needed is binding. The encyclopedia also lists the persons whose summons must be answered: the Prophet ﷺ during his life, the father and the mother, a husband calling his wife, and the ruler or his deputy in what is not forbidden. ^{4 16 17}