and likewise all the other duties He has prescribed [أ/ق 75]—including jihad, justice, the observance of Hajj, Friday and Eid prayers, supporting the oppressed, and enforcing the prescribed penalties—cannot be fulfilled without power and authority. Hence, it is reported: “The ruler is Allah’s shade on earth” (1), and it is said: “Sixty years under an unjust ruler are better than a single night without a ruler” (2).

Experience bears this out. Whenever and wherever governing authority disappears because a ruler dies or is killed and no one succeeds him, strife breaks out between two factions, or the inhabitants rise up against a ruler’s authority—as occurs among some desert-dwellers and villagers—such corruption ensues in religion and worldly affairs, and so many benefits pertaining to both this world and religion are lost, that only Allah knows their full extent.

For this reason, the early Muslims—including al-Fudayl ibn Iyād, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Sahl ibn Abd Allāh al-Tustarī, and others—greatly esteemed the blessing Allah bestowed through the ruler. They regarded praying for him and offering him sincere counsel as among the greatest means of drawing near to Allah Most High, while harboring no desire for his wealth or office and doing so neither out of fear of him nor to assist him in sin and transgression (3).