that you are carrying for others,” seeks thereby to safeguard the small amount he forbids them to pay. Yet if they followed his advice, they would lose both that small amount and the rest, and would themselves be plundered besides. No sensible person would recommend this, much less would divine laws prescribe it. For Allah Most High sent the messengers to secure and enhance benefits, and to prevent and reduce harms as far as possible.

Thus, consider an officeholder who holds a grant and, while retaining his office and grant, uses the levies collected and remitted to the person with whom he is affiliated to ward off far greater injustice and evil from the Muslims. If he cannot avert that harm except by these means, and his withdrawal would allow someone else to take over who would maintain the injustice without reducing it at all, then he is rewarded for doing this. He incurs neither sin nor liability, in this world or the Hereafter.

His case is like that of an orphan’s guardian or the administrator of a charitable endowment who cannot safeguard the interests entrusted to him without paying the unjust levies remitted to the authorities. If his withdrawal would allow someone unjust, who deliberately seeks to oppress, to take over, then his holding that position is lawful, and he incurs no sin for what he pays. Indeed, assuming that responsibility may become obligatory for him.

The same applies to a soldier who holds a grant and reduces the levies imposed on his lands but cannot eliminate them altogether, because he is required to provide horses, weapons, and expenditure that he cannot meet without collecting some of those levies. Despite this, he benefits the Muslims in