Is it permissible for the imam to leave off forbidding a specific evil out of fear of fitnah (trial, discord or temptation)?

The questioner : Our Shaykh, is it permissible for the imam to leave off... out of fear of falling into fitnah (trial, discord or temptation)?

The Shaykh : By Allah, this is fitnah (trial, discord or temptation)! There are people who, if they hear a single word against them, consider it fitnah (trial, discord or temptation), and there are people who, if it were eaten with their private parts, would not consider it fitnah (trial, discord or temptation). I wonder what the fitnah (trial, discord or temptation) is that is intended in the question and considered an excuse for leaving off what Allah has commanded on the tongue of His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)?! So the matter requires, first: general Islamic legal culture, and second: the matter differs according to the faith of the one who wants to leave off what he was commanded to do or to do it. This is like his saying (peace and blessings be upon him) in the well-known hadith in Sahih Muslim: . Who is the one who estimates whether he can change it with his hand first, then with his tongue second, then nothing except disapproval with the heart? Who is the one who can? This differs from person to person; for this reason, some scholars went— and we are not with them in this— that they applied each command of these three matters to the specific class; so they said: ; meaning: the ruler, ; meaning: the scholar, ; meaning: the general people. And this detail means it is not correct on its face; because the Messenger (peace be upon him) came with the wording: , which is from the forms of comprehensiveness and generality; meaning: whoever from you, O people of the Ummah, sees... and it is not correct to say: whoever from you, O rulers, sees, let him change it with his hand, if he cannot, O scholars... no, this detail is not acceptable at all. But the point is that disapproval has these three ranks, and it differs according to the one who is in the face of the evil.
And I like, on this occasion, a word of Ibn Mas'ud that he heard a man saying: "Woe to the one who sees an evil and does not change it with his hand or his tongue." So Ibn Mas'ud said: "But woe to the one who does not disapprove of the evil with his heart," and the meaning of this statement is that it is the last rank. So if a person reaches the point where he does not disapprove of the evil with his heart, he is as it came in the hadith: . As for "woe to the one who does not disapprove of the evil with his hand"; he may not be able to, likewise with his tongue he may not be able to, but with his heart everyone can do that; for this reason he specified this last rank with "woe."