strife arose within the Muslim community. Some people considered the prohibited acts they had committed and condemned and hated them. Others considered the commanded deeds they had performed and loved them. The former would sometimes count their good deeds as evil, while the latter would sometimes count their evil deeds as good.

The underlying principle of this question has already been discussed: if fulfilling the duties of governance is difficult without some form of kingship, does kingship become permissible, just as it becomes permissible when fulfilling those duties would otherwise be impossible? We have mentioned the two views on this. If difficulty is treated as equivalent to impossibility, this is not sinful; if it is not, it is sinful. But where there is neither impossibility nor difficulty, departing from the practice of the caliphs amounts to following one’s desires.

“The correct assessment” is that good deeds remain good deeds, and evil deeds remain evil deeds: these people have mixed righteous deeds with evil ones. The ruling of the Sharia is that they are neither permitted nor commanded to commit the evil deeds they have committed. Nor is their personal gratification to be accepted as an excuse for their actions when the Sharia has not excused them. Rather, they are to be commanded, urged, and encouraged to perform the good deeds they have performed, even if it is known that they will only perform them while committing misdeeds whose harm is outweighed by that good. Thus, rulers are commanded to wage jihad even if it is known that they will only do so while committing some injustice whose harm is slight compared with the benefit of jihad.

Then, if it is known that forbidding them those misdeeds would lead them to abandon obligatory good deeds whose benefit outweighs that harm, they are not to be forbidden those misdeeds, because doing so would cause the harm of abandoning obligatory good deeds. The exception is when both requirements can be met; in that case, the duty is fulfilled in its entirety, just as