…is because a human being may find himself in one of three states.
- He knows the truth and acts upon it.
- He knows the truth but does not act upon it.
- He neither knows it nor accepts it; indeed, he rejects it.
The highest of these is the first: to know the truth and conform one’s conduct to it. The second is to know it while one’s lower self shrinks from it and therefore refuses to comply. The third is the person who does not recognise it at all; rather, he opposes it.
The person in the first condition is approached with ḥikma (wisdom), for wisdom is to grasp the truth and to apply it. Thus the most perfect people are those who recognise the truth and live by it; they are addressed with wisdom.
The second type—he who knows the truth yet his soul resists—is addressed with a mawʿiẓa ḥasana (fair exhortation). These, then, are the two avenues: wisdom and exhortation. Most people need both, for the soul possesses desires that pull it away from the truth even when it has been recognised. Therefore people require fair exhortation as well as wisdom, and the call to faith must employ both.
As for jadal (debate), it is not the primary means of invitation; it functions rather as a defence against an aggressor. When someone challenges the truth, he is met with debate conducted in the best manner. For that reason Allah said, ‘and debate with them,’ making it a commanded action alongside His words ‘invite them.’ He ordered the Prophet to call with wisdom and fair exhortation, and to debate ‘with that which is best.’ Concerning debate He said, ‘with that which is best,’ not merely ‘with what is fair,’ as He said regarding exhortation, because debate involves resistance and confrontation; it therefore must be conducted in the best possible way so as to rectify the element of opposition and contention. Exhortation, by contrast, is not resisted in the same way. Hence, so long as a person remains receptive to wisdom or to fair exhortation—or to both—there is no need to debate him. But once he objects, he is to be debated with that which is best.
Debate, like wisdom, is grounded in knowledge. Allah has condemned those who debate without knowledge, saying:
‘Here you are—arguing about matters of which you have some knowledge; but why do you argue about that of which you have no knowledge?’ (Qur’an 3:66)
Allah does not command the believers to dispute on the basis of a premise conceded by the opponent if that premise does not amount to knowledge. Even were an adversary to speak falsehood, Allah would not instruct us to use falsehood as proof against him; any such procedure is undertaken only to expose the unsoundness of his statement and to reveal its inner contradiction, not to present the invitation to the truth itself. The aim of the Quran is to clarify the truth and to summon people to it, not to catalogue the inconsistencies in their claims merely in order to…