Forbidding Evil: Between a Collective Obligation and an Individual Obligation
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Your Eminence the Shaykh! The capabilities of the Committees for Promoting Virtue and Prohibiting Vice are far less than the amount of visible evil. Is the collective obligation still the ruling in this matter, or is it an individual obligation?
Answer:
The Committee has its duty, and the rest of the Muslims have their duty. The Committee does not achieve the excellence now, because it cannot perform every obligation. The state has promised, and may Allah grant it success, to care for it, encourage it, and increase its numbers. We ask Allah to help the state in that, to grant the Committee success in what is obligatory upon it, and to help it in all good. But in any case, the existence of the Committee, even if it is widespread in every place, is not sufficient. If a person sees evil, he forbids it with his tongue. As for forbidding it with his hand, he refers it to the one who is able to forbid it with his hand; he reports it to the one who is able to forbid it with his hand, unless it is in his household, or he is able to do it because he is from the Committee, or because he is an amir (authority) with powers and the like. So fear Allah as much as you are able. Forbidding evil is obligatory, sometimes as a collective obligation and sometimes as an individual obligation. It is a collective obligation if there is someone who takes your place, such as a group in your village or tribe where some of them forbid the evil, and that suffices you. In fact, if they have performed the obligation, it becomes a recommended practice (sunnah) for you, because you have been relieved of it. But if you are the only one in the tribe or in the village, it is obligatory upon you specifically, an individual obligation, to forbid the evil, because there is no one else. You are the knowledgeable person responsible in the village or in the tribe. You are the responsible one and you are the one who knows the rulings of Allah. So the obligation upon you at that time is an individual obligation to forbid the evil and enjoin what is right. Yes.
Your Eminence the Shaykh! The capabilities of the Committees for Promoting Virtue and Prohibiting Vice are far less than the amount of visible evil. Is the collective obligation still the ruling in this matter, or is it an individual obligation?
Answer:
The Committee has its duty, and the rest of the Muslims have their duty. The Committee does not achieve the excellence now, because it cannot perform every obligation. The state has promised, and may Allah grant it success, to care for it, encourage it, and increase its numbers. We ask Allah to help the state in that, to grant the Committee success in what is obligatory upon it, and to help it in all good. But in any case, the existence of the Committee, even if it is widespread in every place, is not sufficient. If a person sees evil, he forbids it with his tongue. As for forbidding it with his hand, he refers it to the one who is able to forbid it with his hand; he reports it to the one who is able to forbid it with his hand, unless it is in his household, or he is able to do it because he is from the Committee, or because he is an amir (authority) with powers and the like. So fear Allah as much as you are able. Forbidding evil is obligatory, sometimes as a collective obligation and sometimes as an individual obligation. It is a collective obligation if there is someone who takes your place, such as a group in your village or tribe where some of them forbid the evil, and that suffices you. In fact, if they have performed the obligation, it becomes a recommended practice (sunnah) for you, because you have been relieved of it. But if you are the only one in the tribe or in the village, it is obligatory upon you specifically, an individual obligation, to forbid the evil, because there is no one else. You are the knowledgeable person responsible in the village or in the tribe. You are the responsible one and you are the one who knows the rulings of Allah. So the obligation upon you at that time is an individual obligation to forbid the evil and enjoin what is right. Yes.
Source
فتاوى الحج 1405 هـ - 5 — archive.org (27:46)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.