and from which He has forbidden him—for that is an individual duty, as the two Ṣaḥīḥs relate from the Prophet ﷺ that he said, “Whomever Allah wishes good for, He grants him understanding of the religion.” 1

Anyone for whom Allah intends good must, therefore, be granted insight into the religion; whoever is not given such understanding, Allah has not wished good for him. The religion is that with which Allah sent His Messenger: all that a person is required to affirm as true and to put into practice. Every individual must believe Muhammad ﷺ in whatever he reports and obey him in whatever he commands—believing him in a general way and obeying him in a general way. Then, whenever a specific report from him is established, one must believe it in detail, and whenever a specific command reaches him, he must obey it in detail.

In the same vein, washing the deceased, shrouding them, praying over them, and burying them are communal obligations, as is enjoining right (al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf) and forbidding wrong (al-nahy ʿan al-munkar).

All public offices—religious leadership such as the Command of the Believers, and lesser posts such as kingship, ministerial responsibility, or administrative service, whether that involves composing correspondence or keeping the accounts of revenues and expenditures for the stipends of the fighting forces and others, or military command, judicature, market supervision (ḥisbah), and the branches derived from these positions—were instituted solely for the purpose of enjoining right and forbidding wrong.

Within his Prophetic city, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ personally oversaw everything connected to public authority, while appointing officials over regions that lay far from him. Thus he placed ʿAttāb ibn Usayd in charge of Mecca, ʿUthmān ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ over al-Ṭāʾif, Khālid ibn Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ over the villages of ʿUraynah, and he dispatched ʿAlī, Muʿādh, and Abū Mūsā to Yemen. Likewise, he would commission commanders for military detachments and send collectors to gather the zakāt revenues: they would take them from those upon whom they were due and hand them to those entitled to them, the categories Allah named in the Qur’an. The collector would then return to Medina with nothing but his whip; if he had found a proper place to distribute the alms, he brought nothing back to the Prophet ﷺ.

The Prophet ﷺ also audited the officials, holding them to account for what they collected and what they spent, as is recorded in the two Ṣaḥīḥs from Abū Ḥumayd al-Sāʿidī that the Prophet ﷺ