The Peril of Contemporary “Politics”

Finally, I must alert the Muslims to a very important matter in this regard. I say:

Our satisfaction with a Sharia-compliant grasp of current realities, or our preoccupation with it, must never drive us to throw open the doors of contemporary politics—whose practitioners are oppressive—becoming beguiled by the slogans of politicians, parroting their rhetoric, and drowning in their methods.

What is required, rather, is to follow the polity ordained by the Sharia, namely the care of the affairs of the ummah. That guardianship can be undertaken only in the light of the Book and the Sunnah, upon the way of the righteous predecessors, and at the hands of the people of authority: the practicing scholars and the just rulers. Indeed, Allah restrains by worldly power what He does not restrain by the Qur’an. ⦗See al-Durr al-Manthūr 4/99⦘

As for that Western brand of politics that flings its doors wide open and seduces its devotees, it knows no religion. Everyone who pursues it or is submerged in its ocean will be struck by its calamity and scorched by its hellfire, for he has busied himself with the branch before tending to the root. May Allah have mercy on the one who said: “Whoever snatches at a thing before its due time is punished by being deprived of it.”

Allah alone grants success and rectitude.

Our final supplication is: praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.

⦗12⦘

A Question-and-Answer Session on the Fiqh of Current Realities with the eminent Shaykh al-Islam al-Albani