Fiqh of Minorities

Sa alShaykh Mu ammad Sad Rama n al-B 1

Translated by Mahdi Lock
Released by www.marifah.net 1429 H

Minorities It is not a coincidence that the call to Fiqh of Minorities has come together with the plan at Isl plan aimed at dividing Islm. In an age in which the leaders of the ideological attack are planning, throughout the world, to divide the single global Islm into various local Islms, that differ and are in conflict with one another, [this ideological attack] follows in succession the voices calling to Fiqh of Minorities and these [two ideas] grant legitimacy to one another. In clarification of the matter, [Fiqh of Minorities] is nothing other than an Islamic garb that is appropriate for the Islm that is thriving today in the west, in Europe and America, not the other Islm that is prevalent in the traditional Muslim lands. I have inquired before: What are the reasons or foundations that make it necessary to give rise to this Fiqh of Minorities? The reply was: There are many: the principle of benefitsnecessities permit that which is forbiddendifficulty brings about easenothing has been made difficult for you in this religion.2 I said: But these reasons are not specific to Muslims living in Europe or America, rather they are reasons for a global Islmic fiqh that does not have a particular land. There has not been a day when there have not been reasons for what is called Fiqh of Minorities or anything else. Wherever you find a necessity, in its known legal meaning, the causative prohibition for it is lifted. And wherever you find a difficulty that goes beyond the usual limit, a legal dispensation is undertaken to lift it. And whenever the two benefits [the lifting of the causative prohibition and the legal dispensation] are opposed in the hierarchy of the objectives of Sacred Law, the first of them takes precedence. We have not found in the Quran or the Sunnah, and not in the speech of any of the imams of Sacred Law, that these reasons are particular to the circumstances of minorities that are living in Dr al-Kufr3, and that it is not

www.nottsnewmuslims.com Al-Hajj 22:78 3 According to Imm ibn Mufli al- anbal in Al-Adab al-Shariyyah [v.1 pp.191-92], Dr al-Kufr are the lands in which the laws of kufr are predominant, while Dr al-Islm are the lands in which the laws of Islm are predominant.
2

permissible for other Muslims, living in the Islmic world, to take them or use them as a basis. I was told: Indeed the necessities that create the urgent need for a special fiqh for these minorities are a result of their presence in societies that are not Islmic, and have particularities that are distinct from Islmic societies. I said: What Islm is this that decrees that the mere presence of a Muslim in Dr alKufr is considered a necessity justifying the legislation of a special Islmic fiqh for him, in harmony with what surrounds him from the tendencies of kufr, iniquity, and disobedience? So why did Allh legislate emigration ( ijra) and command it, from Dr al-Kufr (if it is not possible for a Muslim to apply the rulings of Islm in it) to Dr al-Islm? Why didnt the Messenger of Allh and his Companions, when they were in the midst of the polytheists in Mecca, depend on that which he did not know, called Fiqh of Minorities? If the mere presence of Muslims in Dr al-Kufr brings about the necessity, justifying the creation of a new fiqh that is appropriate to those lands and those in them, then who are those who Allh, Exalted is He, said regarding them: When the angels seized the souls of those who were doing wrong to their own souls, When you? they asked them: What was the matter with you? They answered: We were land. Allh oppressed in the land. The angels replied: Was not Allhs earth spacious for you to it? indeed. emigrate in it? Hell is the abode of such people and it is a very evil abode indeed 4 And we were rejoicing because of the gradual increase of Muslims in the west, with their adherence to Islm and upholding of its rulings, causing the dissolution of the deviating Western civilization, dissolving in the stream of the Islmic civilization. But we today, in the shadow of this beautiful call to what is known as Fiqh of Minorities, know that we are threatened with the opposite of what we were rejoicing about. We are threatened with the dissolution of the Islmic presence in the stream of the deviating Western civilization, and this fiqh is responsible.

Al-Nis 4:97