and Umar’s banishment of Nasr ibn Hajjāj.

I say: This is treacherous ground—a fraught position and a difficult battleground. One group fell short in this regard: they suspended the prescribed penalties, neglected people’s rights, emboldened the wicked to spread corruption, and rendered the Sharia inadequate to secure people’s welfare. They also closed to themselves many avenues for determining who was in the right and who was in the wrong. Indeed, they set those avenues aside despite their own certain knowledge, and that of others, that they constituted valid evidence, because they imagined them to conflict with the principles of the Sharia.

What led them to this was a certain deficiency in their understanding of the Sharia. When those in authority saw this, and saw that people’s affairs could not be set right without something beyond what this group understood of the Sharia, they instituted rules of governance by which the affairs of society might be ordered. Thus, the former group’s deficient understanding of the Sharia, together with the latter’s introduction of their own systems of governance, gave rise to protracted evil and far-reaching corruption. The situation grew grave and became difficult to remedy.

Another group went to the opposite extreme and permitted forms of governance that conflict with the ruling of Allah and His Messenger. Both groups were brought to this by their deficient understanding of what Allah sent His Messenger with. Allah sent His messengers and revealed His scriptures so that people might uphold justice—the justice by which the heavens and earth are sustained. Whenever the signs of justice become apparent and its true character is made clear, through whatever means, there lie the law and religion of Allah. Allah Most High did not confine the means, proofs, and signs of justice to any one thing while excluding other means equal or superior to them. Rather, through the means He prescribed, He made clear that His purpose is to establish justice and that people should uphold it. Accordingly, every means by which justice and equity are secured forms part of the religion.

It must not be said, “It conflicts with the religion.” Therefore, do not say that just governance conflicts with what the Sharia declares. Rather, it accords with what the Sharia brought; indeed, it is one of its constituent parts. We call it