What is the position of the Muslim youth today regarding their rulers who do not rule by what Allah has revealed and do not raise the banner of jihad in the path of Allah?

Abu Malik: Here, my Shaykh, is a question directed from one of the brothers. He says that most of the rulers today do not rule by what Allah has revealed and do not raise the banner of jihad in the path of Allah. So, what is the obligatory duty of the Muslim youth today?

The Shaykh : The obligatory duty of the Muslims is The obligatory duty of the Muslims is to gain knowledge of the religion, to raise themselves upon this religion, and to raise those who depend on them, such as a spouse, a child, a brother, a neighbor, or a friend. This is how it is. We always revolve around two words: purification and education for the establishment of the Muslim state. Without them, there is no way to establish it, never, never, never. Purification and education are not easy matters, as the honorable professor indicated earlier, that the establishment of the Muslim state may not be witnessed by us who have lived to the age of forty or fifty or more, let alone those younger. This is because history must repeat itself. If the believer truly believes that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is his model in everything, and one of the important matters that the Islamic groups today revolve around, despite their different inclinations and methodologies, is the establishment of the Muslim state, then we must adopt the means that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) adopted so that we can establish the Muslim state. However, we must note a very significant difference: Islam at that time was being revealed directly from Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) onto the heart of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him). Therefore, the Companions of the Prophet did not need to search in books of hadith, books of tafsir, and books of language, and so on, which are prerequisites that a Muslim today cannot understand Islam correctly without. The first Salaf did not need such prerequisites because they took the rulings of Islam directly from the Prophet of Islam. They only had to be raised upon this correct Islam, and this is what the Messenger (peace be upon him) did with his noble Companions. As for us today, before we say we want to raise ourselves upon Islam, we must understand Islam. Is the path to understanding Islam smoothed and facilitated as it was in the first era of Islam? The answer, without any dispute, is no. A very simple example: at that time, there was no science called the science of hadith because they received the hadith directly from its source. There was no science called grammar and morphology. Why? Because they were pure Arabs. But today, the Arabs themselves have become non-Arabs in their understanding. Because of this, in order for them to understand the Qur'an correctly, they must study their language which they have forgotten. So look, we have many, many obstacles before us to be able to apply Islam to ourselves. We must learn this Islam, and we can only do so by adopting the means by which we can understand Islam. Here is a Syrian joke they mention, and what matters to us is that it is true, or perhaps it is a joke containing wisdom. They claim that a non-Arab Muslim man met a Jewish man on the road. He drew his dagger from his waist, threatening the Jew, and said to him: "Islamize or I will kill you." The Jew said: "What should I say?" He said: "By Allah, I do not know what you should say." This is the point: what is the use of this threat if he does not know his own Islam? This joke has a great impact on our reality. As we always say, most Muslims do not know their Islam, even in creed. I will say it plainly: they do not know their Lord. The principle is that the Muslim knows his Lord, not like the polytheists, but better than the polytheists. Otherwise, what is the difference between him and the polytheists? The polytheists, Allah the Lord of the Worlds said about them: So the polytheists were not disbelievers in the Lord of the Worlds. Now, the Muslims today say "Allah." But do they know that Allah means One in His essence, which is called by the scholars tawhid al-rububiyyah (oneness of lordship), and One in His worship, which is called by them tawhid al-uluhiyyah (oneness of worship), and One in His names and attributes? Most Muslims do not know this at all. They do not understand the good word "La ilaha illa Allah" except with the polytheistic concept, meaning our Lord is One with no partner, meaning no one creates with Him, no one provides with Him. The polytheists were like that, but these polytheists were described by the Lord of the Worlds in His saying in the Noble Qur'an: This is the reality today among the Muslims themselves. Those who claim to go to visit the awliya (close friends of Allah) and the righteous do not go to visit them to achieve the cause mentioned by the Messenger (peace be upon him) in some of his hadiths. After he had forbidden them from visiting graves, he said to them: But today, they do not go to visit the awliya and the righteous to remember the Hereafter, but rather to seek aid from them and to seek blessing by praying at their shrines. All of this contradicts the testimony "La ilaha illa Allah." So where are the Muslims who want to establish the Muslim state, when most of them still do not know tawhid? This is a very broad field.