The Ruling on Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil: Is It an Individual Obligation or a Collective Obligation?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
He says:
The Shaykh:
Yes.
The questioner:
The questioner says: Is enjoining good and forbidding evil an individual obligation, as in the hadith of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)
The Shaykh:
It is a collective obligation. If a person sees it and does not forbid it, it becomes an individual obligation for him. If a person sees an evil and someone else forbids it, the obligation is lifted from him, and praise be to Allah. So it is a collective obligation: if enough people perform it, the obligation is lifted from the rest. If enough people do not perform it, it becomes an individual obligation for whoever sees it; it becomes an individual obligation, such as if the evil is in his house or in his neighborhood, and there is nothing there to forbid the evil of Allah; it is obligatory upon him, an individual obligation. However, if there are people with him who forbid it and they forbid it sufficiently, that suffices for him.
He says:
The Shaykh:
Yes.
The questioner:
The questioner says: Is enjoining good and forbidding evil an individual obligation, as in the hadith of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)
Who among you sees?
من رأى منكم؟The Shaykh:
It is a collective obligation. If a person sees it and does not forbid it, it becomes an individual obligation for him. If a person sees an evil and someone else forbids it, the obligation is lifted from him, and praise be to Allah. So it is a collective obligation: if enough people perform it, the obligation is lifted from the rest. If enough people do not perform it, it becomes an individual obligation for whoever sees it; it becomes an individual obligation, such as if the evil is in his house or in his neighborhood, and there is nothing there to forbid the evil of Allah; it is obligatory upon him, an individual obligation. However, if there are people with him who forbid it and they forbid it sufficiently, that suffices for him.
Source
لقاءات لابن باز - لقاء مع إخوة في الله - ابن باز - ٣ — archive.org (30:05)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.