Political Instinct (Fitrah) and Religious Deviations

by Dr Hakem al-Mutairi
All praises be to Allah, and may His prayers and blessings be upon he who was sent as a mercy to all creation, to return them to the Fitrah and the sanctity of the Deen, and upon his all his descendents and companions... I recently had the pleasure of receiving an invitation from the High Council for Dawah, a branch of the Ministry for Guidance and Waqf in the Sudan, to attend a conference entitled Future Horizons of the Islamic Dawah, which took place 13-15 October 2010. Around twenty-five papers on issues pertaining to the Islamic Dawah were presented and my paper, Contemporary Islamic Political Discourse and its Problems, which was originally an article I published entitled Political Doctrine: its Necessity, its Gravity and its Absence in the Contemporary Islamic Movement, was presented during the first session. When my turn came to present, the conference chair surprised the attendees by his saying: and now, for Dr Hakem al-Mutairis paper, and pay attention to every word it says, as its serious! I opened the presentation with notes pertaining to the topic: First: the papers topic is the problems of contemporary political discourse, not with regards to other fields in which the contemporary Islamic Dawah has succeeded, such as the fields of Dawah and propagation, education, upbringing, charity, humanitarian work and Jihad. Seeing as Islamic political movements came with the goal of re-establishing the Khilafah and the resumption of the Islamic way of life, this paper studies the reasons behind the political movements failures in achieving this goal or nearing it. Second: the paper confines itself to Islamic political movements and does not consider groups purely concerned with Dawah, education, humanitarian work, etc. Third: the paper looks at the Islamic political movement, in all its variations, as one, considering the Ummah is one, the goal is one, which is the re-establishment of the Khilafah, and these movements represent one political current, even if its schools, interpretations and ijtihads differ. Fourth: the paper aims to pose questions and highlight problems more than it does to offer solutions and answers. If someone were to want to know the solutions, in the eyes of the author, they may refer to his books, Freedom or the Flood, Liberating the Human; Disarming Tyranny, The Criterion (al-Furqan) between the Facts of Iman and the Falsehoods of Shirk and Tyranny and Ahl ul-Sunnah wal-Jamaaah: Problems of Aqeedah and the Political Crisis. I then posed questions around the crisis of the contemporary Islamic political movement. Why has its political discourse retreated to such an extent that it now recognises as legitimate territorialism, nationalism and the ruling powers, with all that such recognition entails, after it had once hoped to restore the One Khilafah for the One Ummah? How is it that elements of it have allowed themselves to get entangled in alliances

with foreign occupation forces, as is the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the point where they have participated in the occupation governments, whose armies lay siege to resisting cities and demolish them over the heads of their occupants, and after all this such an alliance does not expel it from the circle of the Islamic movement and does not clash with any core fundamental of its Aqeedah and doctrine?! How is it that the Arab governments that the occupying enemy has employed as part of its neo-colonialist project have come to be considered legitimate governments, or governments which have an Islamically sanctioned mandate to rule, despite that the fundamentals of the Islamic doctrinal Aqeedah message, let alone the legal Fiqhi rulings which branch off from it, establishes that such an act is apostasy (Riddah) and Kufr?! I then went on to briefly explain the contents of the paper according to the allotted time, and with the frankness of the Bedouin with which I was endowed, for by nature I dislike courtesy at the expense of the truth and flattery at the expense of the Deen, for the only reason for our attendance was to be truthful to our people in our speech, and sincere to them in expressing our advice and outlining our opinion, and this is the reality of the Deen as in the authentic Hadith: The Deen is advice... to Allah, to His Book, to His Prophet and to the Imams of the Muslims and their public. All this, of course, within the limits of etiquette and good manners, as said the poet: And, despite my arrogance and stubbornness... and the taint of my nomadic ways, I am a literary man of eloquence What has pushed us towards this grave matter, which has raised a divide in opinion between us and our people, to the point where the truth has not left for us the luxury of a friend, is love for Allah, for His messenger, for his Deen and for the Ummah, which today faces all these unprecedented challenges which it must face; love for an Islamic movement which has lost its way after having offered thousands of martyrs and heroes throughout an entire century, only to reach its current conclusion: an Islamic movement whose contemporary reality is represented by retreats followed by further retreats until none of its goals remains other than holding on for its very existence! The only other conclusion is this alliance with the occupation, or with the allies of the occupation in each country, in order for the Taghut to express its pleasure with them something that will never be! I spoke of the crisis of the Islamic political movement, which can be summarised in the following: 1. The absence, or obscure and foggy vagueness, of its Political Aqeedah (i.e. political doctrine/ideological principles), which is the foundation for any political project or system of political governance. 2. The lack of clarity in its Political Project, a project supposedly founded on the Quran and Sunnah, but which in essence does not differ from what is called for by nationalist and liberal political reformists, but for its raising of the slogan: Islam is the Solution!

3. The lack of development of the mechanism for organised political action, seeing as the Islamic movement is still debating the validity and legitimacy or establishing political parties, let alone further developing them to face contemporary challenges by utilising the latest means, which have allowed the political party to become the most effective tool for change in contemporary states. After I finished presenting, the turn came for a Professor to comment on it, who seems not to have only read the paper in that very instant, as he disparaged it with an air of blatant intellectualisation and claimed that the paper failed to define the term Political Aqeedah, despite the fact that the paper defined it twice! He also claimed that Political Aqeedah is a made up term, while missing the point that the very same applies to Islamic political system, Islamic economics and Islamic media, all of which are contemporary, made up terms, but ones which express real and accurate phenomena. In this context, Political Aqeedah is among the fundamentals of Iman and the foundations of the Deen; we have only used this term to clearly demarcate the concept and differentiate between the Islamic doctrinal fundamentals which relate, both in real and legal terms, to political realities, such as the belief in the obligation to seek judgement in the Quran and the Sunnah, and the Islamic doctrinal foundations which do not relate directly to political realities, such as the belief in the final day of judgement. The Professor was then taken by the partisan fervour of the Jahiliyyah and reduced the entire matter to a defence of the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing me of having meant them specifically by the paper! This despite the fact that the paper began by criticising the Salafi and Sufi political movements in Egypt before even coming to the topic of criticising the contemporary Islamic political movement! The Professor then proceeded to sing the praises of the Muslim Brotherhood and the history of their struggle instead of discussing the paper and what was put forth in it! At the end of the session, many scholars and other people of grace, representing all colours of the Dawah spectrum; Salafi, Sufi and activist, all came over to confirm their agreement with what was put forth in the paper and that it exposed the crisis of the contemporary Islamic political movement and diagnosed its ailments. In addition to this, many members of the Muslim Brotherhood apologised to me for the conduct of the commenting Professor, expressing their disapproval of his behaviour, which transgressed all boundaries of manners and discipline in the realm of discussion and debate. After the conference, I visited the great scholar, al-Hibr Yusuf, the supervisor of the Brotherhood in the Sudan, and we discussed the paper and the controversy and debate which it instigated. He laughed and said to me: dont you know, Dr Hakem, that when the term the Islamic movement is used, nothing is understood to be implied by it but the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly here in Sudan?! As was later related to me, the debate around the paper continued to rage among the attendees of the conference, which revealed to me another face of the crisis, for the defect was no longer limited to the Political Aqeedah, but exceeded it into the realm of Political Instinct (Fitrah). A discussion took place between the commenting Professor and the genial scholar

Muhammad al-Hibr, which went something like this: Sheikh Muhammad: what is the situation of the Islamic movement in Iraq? The commenting professor: it split into three sections; one which got involved with the occupation, one which resisted it and another which remained in isolation, and each section has its ijtihad. Sheikh Muhammad: a single movement splits into three groups over a matter as serious and as clear cut as this one?! Is any more proof required to indicate the crisis of the Islamic political movement as outlined in Dr Hakems paper? Another such debate took place between an honest judge and an Islamic scholar over the paper, and this is how it went as was related to me in meaning, not in exact words: The judge: what is your opinion of what Dr Hakem calls for in his books? The scholar: Dr Hakem exceeded in the issue of the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Khulafaa, even though they are merely ijtihaads which may have been suitable for their time but are unsuitable for ours, and no one has claimed the authority of these ijtihads! The judge: it seems as though you have not read his books. The scholar: I read parts of them. The judge: what is meant by the Sunnah of the Khulafaa, as I understand it and as in the Hadith Follow my Sunnah and the Sunnah of the Rightly Guided Khulafaa, is the fundamentals upon which the Islamic political system is built, which were agreed upon by consensus among the Khulafaa and which are proven by evidences from the Quran and the Sunnah, such as the Khilafah, the unity of the Ummah, the right of the Ummah to elect its governing body by means of contentment and consultation (Shura), etc... what is not meant is their secondary ijtihads. Otherwise, what would be inclined to say is the fundamental that we can agree upon as the foundation of the Islamic political system, without which the system would no longer be considered an Islamic system? The scholar: that Islam came with general principles and left the door open to each time and place, and that there is no specific system! The judge: so then what Dr Hakem has said is true: that we do not have a specific Political Aqeedah and therefore recognise as legitimate all manner and form of different ruling governments. The scholar: there is no Islamic movement in the whole world that recognises the existing ruling governments as legitimate, as the Dr claims! The judge: what would you call their active participation in these governments and their recognition of their legitimacy, as well as their stigmatisation of anyone who goes against these governments as Khawarij? Is that not conceding a degree of legitimacy to these governments? And then do you not consider as apostasy (Riddah) and Kufr the entry into an alliance and coalition with the occupation and

fighting in its trench again the Ummah which is participating in Jihad against this occupation? The scholar: no, this act in and of itself is not Kufr or apostasy (Riddah)! The judge: and when, in your opinion, is aiding the occupying Kuffar and fighting among their ranks to be considered Kufr and apostasy? The scholar: if the Muslim intends by his act of fighting with them that their Deen becomes prevailant over the Deen of the Muslims. The judge: and is it conceivable that any Muslim would intend by his fighting with them that their Deen becomes prevalent over that of the Muslims? This intention, in and of itself, would remove him from the fold of Islam even if he did not act upon it and fight with them, and hence his actual act of fighting with them remains without legal status! The scholar: aiding them is a semblance of Kufr, but not Kufr in and of itself, as for that one must know the intention! The judge: leaving the Islamic legal ruling aside for a moment, from a purely logical perspective, do our minds not dictate that he who stands with the enemy in its transgression against a particular nation becomes, in the eyes of that nation, an enemy identical to those with whom he has allied himself and deserving of the same treatment as them? Are members of that nation who stand with the enemy not traitors deserving of death for their treachery in the eyes of all the worlds peoples? The scholar: minds have nothing to do with this matter; the judgement is up to the Shariah! The judge: do you not concede that we have reached the condition that was mentioned by the Dr in his paper, considering the Islamic political movement no longer has any cause that is deserving of its sacrifice or in which to partake Jihad? The scholar: sacrificing for the sake of the Deen does not necessarily entail fighting! The judge: then give me one cause that, in your opinion, is worth fighting for! To which the scholar refrained from answering... The matter does not end there, but this is a mere reflection of the broader crisis that is being lived by the contemporary Islamic movement, in its preachers, scholars, thinkers and politicians, other than those few spared by the mercy of Allah! This exchange between the judge and the scholar exposed that the Ummahs crisis is in its mind before being in its Deen, as has been related in the Hadith: No people have gone astray after having been guided but that they were made to become embroiled in dispute. Another thing it has exposed is the gravity of religious conceptions when they have deviated from Human Instinct or Fitrah! The Asharite philosophers and legists established and enshrined the doctrine that things are neither beautiful nor ugly other than what has been deemed as such by

the Shariah and that the mind has no authority whatsoever! This was in response to the Mutazilah, who said that the mind is capable of distinguishing what is beautiful and what is ugly, and therefore there is no excuse for those who disbelieved in Allah because monotheism is obligatory by necessity of logic! Sheikh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah responded to both groups that both their claims were unheard of among the Salaf of the Ummah and that such claims are naught but innovation, since the mind is the condition for accountability, and if minds were incapable of discerning the beauty of what was brought forth by the Shariah they would not have believed in it, so if it is claimed that minds cannot comprehend other than what the Shariah has deemed beautiful, one ends up with a circular fallacy; a logical impossibility unacceptable to our minds! Sheikh al-Islam established that the correct answer, as evidenced by the Quran, is that minds can distinguish beauty from ugliness by means of instinct and Fitrah, and therefore the Quran chastises the Mushrikoon for their suspension of their mental faculties: Have ye no understanding? however, there is no reward and no punishment before the Shariah has been sent: nor would We send Our Wrath until We had sent an apostle (to give warning). From here, we understand the gravity of the error, both in Fatwa and in legal ruling, of those who would concede the Asharite maxim, as the beautiful can become ugly, and the ugly beautiful, by laying claim that this is the judgement and ruling of the Shariah, so Human Instinct and Fitrah is reversed and the mind suffers a relapse as it renounces its own light, and all in the name of the Deen! The human is civil and social by his very nature, loving for others to treat him the way he would treat them, as in the Prophetic Hadith, and this is an objective gauge, and as in the other Hadith in which a man asks permission from the Prophet (may Allahs Peace and Blessings be upon him) to partake in Zina, so the Prophet (may Allahs Peace and Blessings be upon him) replies: Would you accept this for your daughter? He replies: no! So he asks: Would you accept it for your mother? He replies: no! So he says: Similarly, people do not accept it for their daughters or their mothers. In the same manner that the human is civil and social by his very nature, instinct and Fitrah, he is also political by his very nature and his Fitrah, for he loves justice and sees it as something beautiful and he despises injustice and sees it as something ugly; similarly, he sees freedom as beautiful and servitude and enslavement as something ugly, etc. It is in this context that the authentic Hadith is narrated: The best of your leaders are those whom you love and who love you, and whom you pray for and who pray for you; and the wickedest of your leaders are those whom you despise and who despise you, and whom you curse and who curse you. This is a clear evidence that the collective mind and the collective sentiment is in agreement on its political judgement of the ruling authority, and is in possession of an objective gauge with which to measure this authoritys behaviour, because the human by his very nature, instinct and Fitrah is capable of discerning the ruling authoritys justice and injustice, and its beneficence from its wickedness. Therefore,

the praise and condemnation in the Hadith was aimed at the leaders, not the public, because the general judgement of the public is correct: those whom they love and whom they pray for are among the righteous, and those whom they despise and curse is among the wicked; the Ummah is not implicated in any of this as it is the judge and the referee of the rulers, and not the opposite! This is confirmed by another Hadith: Sin is what you keep in your chest and you fear others to look upon. This contains evidence that people possess a gauge with which to distinguish and discern righteous deeds from sin and good from evil! If this is indeed the case and the human, by virtue of his natural Human Instinct and Fitrah, is able to recognise good and evil and beauty and ugliness, then he is not removed from this instinctual state of natural Fitrah unless he undergoes a fundamental change by means of a mutated and deformed religious conceptualisation or a breaking down of his moral fibre, which would cause the human to deviate from his natural state, as in the authentic Hadith Qudsi: I created My servants Hunafaa (monotheists), then the Devils led them astray. This includes devils from among the Jinn and those from among humans and their Taghuts, as Allah says in the Quran: Of those who reject faith the patrons are the Taghut: from light they will lead them forth into the depths of darkness. If the natural human by his very instinct and human Fitrah rejects anyones transgression against his person, his wealth, his honour, his land, or his nation, and finds some cause that pushes him to fight and defend his rights, and similarly he finds natural cause to reject the injustice and oppression of the state, then only if he undergoes a doctrinal religious transformation which beautifies bowing down to injustice and oppression and shames the defence of land and honour does he undergo a relapse and reversal where what is ugly seems in his eyes to be beautiful, such as the belief that Allah has ordained and willed this injustice and oppression and that it is not up to him to refuse what Allah has willed and ordained! Or he believes that this is a punishment from Allah because of his own inequity and the injustice of his people and that he must accept this as Allahs purification of them! Or he believes that Allah did not create them to die for their land and their borders or for the Dunya and its ornaments, but rather he created them to worship him as One! Or he believes that it is forbidden for him to fight, because it may cause Fitnah and strife and innocents may die as a result of the actions of the resistance and therefore they must desist from fighting! Or he believes that fighting and resistance is forbidden in the absence of the legitimate Khaleefah in the Ummah or until the Mahdi arrives, etc! Or he believes that the invading and occupying enemy entered his land under a contract that carries the potential of reasonable doubt to be mistaken for an Islamically legitimate contract, under permission from the ruling governments, and therefore their presence possesses a sanctity that prevents one from resisting it! Or he believes that the governments which fall under the enemys hegemony and

influence possess legitimate authority and that resistance is forbidden without their permission! All of these doctrines and others lead those believing in them to bow down to the foreign occupation and the internal tyranny and injustice, nay it leads him to accept and coexist with this reality which is rejected by healthy instincts and Fitrahs and by level minds, even if they belong to idolatrous polytheists! When such a person is subjected to the injustice and tyranny of an oppressive regime, he may deem it righteous to refrain from resisting it as a worship with which to get closer to Allah, as though he believes that his rejection of injustice removes him from the circle of the Believers or of the Deen or of the Firqatul Naajiyah (the group saved from Hellfire)! And he may imagine that it is forbidden for him to even despise the unjust ruler, so he deems it righteous to love him, praise him and pray for him; he thereby exits the natural and balanced Human Instinct (Fitrah), which despises by its very nature whoever would deal it injustice or would transgress against it! He may reach a state in which he loathes everyone who despises the tyrant; nay, in which he would also incite to kill and fight whomever despises the tyrant! All this deviance from the natural Human Instinct (Fitrah) due to deviance in understanding the Deen! It is because of this that all nations, despite their differences in Deen, resist by virtue of their natural Fitrah and reject by virtue of their Human Instinct what Muslims today accept in the name of the Deen! And everything considered to be an ethical crime by idolatrous and irreligious nations is considered by Muslims now to be something permissible! Be it treachery, allying oneself with the occupying enemy, consuming the wealth of nations claiming that they are in fact princely gifts (obtained thus with no supervision and no questioning), or the imprisonment of tens of thousands without charge or accusation, and all other manner of such crimes! All these matters have become acceptable and justified in the name of the Deen for many Muslims, while to the Kuffar they remain ethical crimes in the name of and reason and instinct! What other nations reject by virtue of their instinct and reason, many Muslims may justify with the claim that it is what the Deen commands! It is because of this that the Prophetic Hadiths have informed us that there will come a time when what is good will become evil and what is evil will become good! The Sahabah (may Allah be pleased with them) used to recognise as beautiful and admirable by means of pure instinct and sound reason what the later generations have failed to realise thanks to their grotesque transfigurement in the name of the Deen and the Sunnah, as shown in the authentic Hadith about the Romans and 'Amr ibn al-'As' speech about their traits: "...and the fifth trait is admirable and beautiful: they are the most resistant to the injustice of kings!" Similarly, if the human is subjected to disfigured imaginings and mental illusions, he

might suffer banishment from his state of natural political and social instinct, as in when he imagines that surrendering to the occupying enemy and cooperating with them is what is dictated by 'the nature of politics' and 'the necessity of good judgement'! And he believes that those who resist the occupier are doing more harm than good! And he comes under the illusion that good judgement necessitates 'benefitting from' the occupation so that the Ummah may strengthen and rise! Thus, what is considered treason and treachery by all nations on earth is considered by Muslims, their Islamic movements, their Islamic preachers and their Islamic scholars, all but those few whom Allah has protected, to be 'politics'! And all this for nothing but for the prevalence of this obsessive madness and political insanity that has been practiced by them for over a hundred years, under the claim of the Ummah's weakness and inability to face its enemy, despite the fact that their countries have obtained the nuclear bomb, as in Pakistan; are producing advanced weapons systems, as in Iran and Turkey; are the wealthiest and most oil- and gasrich countries on earth, as in the Gulf states, Lybia, Iraq and Algeria; and in number they have reached 1.5 billion! Yet despite all this, they remain psychologically defeated and plagued by mental doubts, imagining that the Ummah is incapable of defeating the Western colonialist enemy while they see the weakest Islamic population in Afghanistan is able on its own to defeat the NATO coalition back by all its forces and armies, so how would it be if the Ummah stood with them and supported their Jihad and their resistance that is recognised as legitimate by all divine Shariahs and international charters?! Even the resistance in Iraq was capable on its own to defeat the occupation armies, to the extent that the enemy admitted its own defeat in 2007, were it not for the treachery of the Arabs and non-Arabs in their effort to lay siege to the resistance and were it not for the religious Fatwas of the Muftis who suffer from Fitnah and the political absurdities of the obsessed politicians, all of which were harsher on the resistance than the occupying armies! The Ummah was not betrayed by inadequacy in numbers or arms, but rather it was betrayed by the corruption of its governments and the treachery of its scholars and politicians, as was reported in the Hadith: The nations will gather against you the way the hungry gather around their meal. They asked: Oh messenger of Allah, will we be few in that day? he said: no, you will be many, but you will be scum like the scum of the river, and Allah will snatch the fear from the hearts of your enemies and throw into your hearts al-Wahn: the love of life and the hatred of death! The Political Instinct of many Muslims has been corrupted I do not mean their general public, most of whom are sounder in mind and purer in soul, but rather their elites who have joined with their governments in appropriating the Ummahs wealth and selling it for the most meagre and miserable of prices! This was before the corruption of the Political Aqeedah, which rendered many Islamic political movements, as is the case with many of the Ummahs scholars and preachers, a heavy load and a dangerous evil on the Ummah, its Deen and its freedom and independence, after gaining the Wests acceptance and pleasure has turned into a purpose to which the movement strives, while Allah says: They will continue to fight you until they turn you away from your Deen if they can, whereas the insanely obsessed and those suffering from the whispers of the Devil talk of the necessity to

establish Islams innocence from the charge of terrorism and the incumbency of civilisational interaction and building bridges with the colonialist West before its armies, which continue to demolish the villages of Afghanistan over the heads of its women and children, depart; and before they exit Iraq, a fifth of whose population has been killed, maimed or become refugees thanks to the transgression of the Crusader armies; and before the liberation of Palestine, whose population has been suffering the most horrendous of torture with active American and European support for the past sixty years! The extent to which many Islamic political movements have come to be considered a bad omen for the Ummah was succinctly expressed by the gracious sheikh Muhammad Qutb when he asked one of the leaders of the Islamic movement after a meeting: have you discussed the condition of the Ummah? The Islamic leader said: No! So, sheikh Muhammad Qutb replied: So then the Ummah is fine!
1

1 Whilst being weary of attempting to state the obvious, I would like to highlight the double
meaning of Qutbs comment for fear that it may have been lost in translation: on the despairing absurdist front, the Ummah remains fine so long as the movements leaders do NOT discuss its condition; on the sarcastic front, the Ummah is obviously doing absolutely fine, so there is no need whatsoever for the movements leaders to discuss its condition!