The Ruling on Secularists: Between Disbelief and Hypocrisy
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, regarding the secularists, are they closer to hypocrisy or to disbelief?
Answer:
The secularists are atheists; they are not merely atheists, they are atheists, because they do not see religion being brought into the affairs of people. They see religion only for worship in the mosques only. As for political affairs, transactions, and their other matters, they say that people should act in these matters without the Shari'ah and without anything else. They act according to their interests and desires. This is disbelief in Allah the Exalted and removing the Book of Allah the Exalted and the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) from life. So this is disbelief and atheism.
So they are worse than the hypocrites. The hypocrites display Islam on the outside, they pray, they fast, and they send blessings upon the Prophet on their outward appearance, while their inner secrets are with Allah. As for these people, they have openly declared disbelief. They have removed the Shari'ah of Allah from being applied to the conditions and transactions of people. This is explicit, declared disbelief. It is not like the hypocrite who displays something and hides its opposite. These people did not hide anything; they declared it openly. So they are worse than the hypocrites.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, regarding the secularists, are they closer to hypocrisy or to disbelief?
Answer:
The secularists are atheists; they are not merely atheists, they are atheists, because they do not see religion being brought into the affairs of people. They see religion only for worship in the mosques only. As for political affairs, transactions, and their other matters, they say that people should act in these matters without the Shari'ah and without anything else. They act according to their interests and desires. This is disbelief in Allah the Exalted and removing the Book of Allah the Exalted and the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) from life. So this is disbelief and atheism.
So they are worse than the hypocrites. The hypocrites display Islam on the outside, they pray, they fast, and they send blessings upon the Prophet on their outward appearance, while their inner secrets are with Allah. As for these people, they have openly declared disbelief. They have removed the Shari'ah of Allah from being applied to the conditions and transactions of people. This is explicit, declared disbelief. It is not like the hypocrite who displays something and hides its opposite. These people did not hide anything; they declared it openly. So they are worse than the hypocrites.
Source
شرح قرة عيون الموحدين [5] — alfawzan.live (37:10)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.