Commentary on the statement: "Islam is a whole that cannot be divided, and it is obligatory for Muslims to adopt Islam in its entirety without division."

The Shaykh : He says: "Islam is a whole that cannot be divided, and it is obligatory for Muslims to adopt Islam in its entirety without division." This is a correct call; it is not permissible for any Muslim to doubt it. However, there is something that must be noted: there is intellectual adoption and there is practical adoption. What it is not permissible to hesitate about, and what must be adopted in full, is intellectual adoption; of course, it is not permissible to believe in part of the Book and disbelieve in part of it. As for application, it is like the religious obligations related to every Muslim who is accountable; he does what he is able to do of them, and .
Likewise, the ummah (the Muslim community) is, as is well known, nothing but a group of individuals. Just as every individual is obligated to do what he is able to do, so the ummah is obligated to do what it is able to do. Once we understand this reality—which is a self-evident truth with no doubt in it—it becomes clear to you that this writer has confused thought with action, which should correspond to thought. He is as if he is seeking an Islamic society in which Islam is applied in its entirety, where no part of it, whether small or large, can be left unapplied. This is, of course, impossible to achieve, especially for later Muslims. He now explicitly says: "Before we return the law of personal status to conform to the Book and the Sunnah—so that we remove from it what contradicts Islam and put in it what Islam commands—before all of this, we must reform society. We must reform this society and prepare it to accept these rulings and these laws."
This is beautiful speech in reality, and this preparation is what we call for before focusing on things we have no way to achieve. Not because if we were able to do it, we would not do it; for this is a very great difference between what we call people to, which is to act on what we are able to in order to resume Islamic life. There is no doubt that this will be step by step, and to the extent that a person or a nation is able. For example, if Islam consists of a hundred rulings, and we are currently living a practical life of ten of them, there is no harm in adding one, then a second, then a third, until they become twenty, thirty, and so on. But to wait until the nation resumes its complete Islamic life among its own people and individuals, and to let the ruling proceed in contradiction to the Book and the Sunnah, while we are able to amend and change this ruling without any hardship or effort, as is now clear from this movement taking place in Kuwait; accepting the reality of these laws on the pretext that the society is not a complete Islamic society means that the Islamic society will remain incomplete. For there is no doubt that the effort of individuals in reform is less than the effort of governments. It was said, or rather, it is narrated from Uthman that he said: "Indeed, Allah restrains by the ruler what He does not restrain by the Qur'an." If the ruler agrees to change a law to conform to the Islamic Shari'ah, why do we refuse and stand between this reform and its implementation on the pretext that our Islamic reality does not accept this reform? This is a very strange matter!
Years ago, it was known in the law of personal status that if a Muslim divorces his wife three times in one session with one phrase, his wife becomes divorced from him with a major final divorce; that is, as He (the Exalted) said: . Then some of those engaged in Islamic jurisprudence adopted this opinion or this ruling as the opinion of the four schools of jurisprudence, which the masses of Muslims strive to preserve the issues of, and they do not allow anyone to deviate from them, no matter what way they find to deviate. Nevertheless, when these people saw the bad effect of adopting this opinion—that divorce with the phrase of three is three divorces—they returned and adopted an opinion that, until recently, was considered an anomalous and rejected opinion; namely, the opinion of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him), who returned in this issue, about eight centuries ago, to the Sunnah. He said: "Divorce with the phrase of three is only one divorce." Some jurists adopted this and introduced this correct Islamic ruling into the law of personal status. And there are, without doubt—I am not a lawyer, and I have not studied the law of personal status—but I know for certain that there are many rulings like this one that contradict the Islamic Shari'ah, either the Book or the Sunnah or both. What harm did the Islamic society suffer, which has not advanced at all since recently, when this ruling was changed to conform to the Sunnah? It did not harm anything, the society did not become agitated, and the society did not reject it, as the author of this article suggests.