Emphasizing the Obligation of Cooperation
Therefore, cooperation is indispensable, in obedience to the words of the Lord of all creation in His Noble Book: “Cooperate with one another in righteousness and piety, and do not cooperate in sin and aggression.” [al-Māʾidah 5:2] Through such cooperation the desired benefits for the Muslim Ummah are attained.
This point is self-evident. One can scarcely imagine a single individual who is at once a scholar thoroughly grounded in the Qur’an and Sunnah, a first-rate physician, and—at the same time—an expert in what people today call fiqh al-wāqiʿ (an informed understanding of contemporary realities). The more a person devotes himself to one discipline, the less time he has for another, and the greater his concern for that other field, the more he must necessarily neglect the first—and so on.
Perfection, as I mentioned earlier, can only be achieved when all such specialists cooperate, each bringing his own expertise to bear alongside the others. Only then—and only then—are the higher objectives of the Sharīʿah fulfilled for all Muslims, and do they escape from manifest loss, as the Lord of all creation says:
“By the passage of time! Indeed, mankind is in utter loss, save those who believe and perform righteous deeds, and counsel one another to the truth and counsel one another to patience.” [al-ʿAṣr 103:1-3]