Divine call
Open-knowledge reference entry
The divine call, unitarian call, or da‘wat at-tawḥīd is the time period of Druze proselytization
that was opened at sunset on Thursday 30 May 1017 CE by Fātimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah and closed in 1043 CE by al-Muqtana Baha'uddin, henceforth prohibiting anyone else from converting to the Druze religion.
History
The call was suspended briefly between 19 May 1018 and 9 May 1019 CE during the apostasy of ad-Darazi and again between 1021 and 1026 CE during a period of persecution by Ali az-Zahir for those who had sworn the oath to accept the call. Persecutions started forty days after the disappearance into occultation of al-Hakim, who was thought to have been converting people to a Unitarian faith for over twenty years prior. Al-Hakim convinced some heretical followers such as ad-Darazi of his soteriological divinity and officially declared the Divine call after issuing a decree promoting religious freedom.Remove ye the causes of fear and estrangement from yourselves. Do away with the corruption of delusion and conformity. Be ye certain that the Prince of Believers hath given unto you free will, and hath spared you the trouble of disguising and concealing your true beliefs, so that when ye work ye may keep your deeds pure for God. He hath done thus so that when you relinquish your previous beliefs and doctrines ye shall not indeed lean on such causes of impediments and pretensions. By conveying to you the reality of his intention, the Prince of Believers hath spared you any excuse for doing so. He hath urged you to declare your belief openly. Ye are now safe from any hand which may bring harm unto you.
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This entry incorporates text from “Divine call” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.