What is the ruling on residing in lands of disbelief if one is able to practice the rituals of the religion, unlike in his Muslim country?

The questioner : In the name of Allah, and praise is to Allah, and blessings and peace be upon the Messenger of Allah and upon his family and companions, a great peace.
Praise is to Allah who has prepared the means for us so that we gathered with the honorableThe Shaykh : Nasir al-Din al-Albani (may Allah preserve him). We came from the country of the Netherlands, and we have some questions we wish to put forward toThe Shaykh : (may Allah preserve him). We have been able, praise be to Allah, to establish some centers in the Netherlands, and we now have approximately twenty Islamic schools recognized by that state, and we have preachers, praise be to Allah, among them Ahmad Salam Abu Suhayb from Damascus, and the brother Imad al-Din Bakr Ismail, and some brothers of different nationalities. So the situation is this: what is the ruling on residing in those lands, such that a person is able to practice all his acts of worship without being subjected to harassment or oppression by those people, whereas in his own country he is not able to? So what is the ruling on residing in these lands?

The Shaykh : Praise is to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness. And we seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our souls and from the badness of our deeds. Whom Allah guides, there is no one who can misguide him, and whom He leaves to misguide, there is no one who can guide him. And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, with no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger. As for what follows:
It is without doubt among the people of knowledge that the residence of a Muslim in lands of disbelief, no matter how good their morals may be, as long as they are lands of disbelief, it is not permissible to reside in them. The hadiths that have come regarding this matter are many, and very many. In my opinion, there are many tapes recorded with an answer to a question like this. If you do not have any of these tapes, then the scientific elaboration obligates me to remind you of some of these hadiths, and then to elaborate on them to affirm the meanings and correct Islamic directives they contain. Do you have any of these tapes or not?

The questioner : No, we do not have any.

The Shaykh : You do not have any, so I say—affirming what came before: The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), as you know, affirmed the continuation of migration from lands of disbelief to lands of Islam until Allah inherits the earth and those upon it. So migration continues until the Day of Resurrection. It is not hidden from any of you, if Allah wills, that the migration the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) speaks of in this hadith is intended to be the migration of the Muslims whom Allah (Mighty and Majestic) guides, who are in lands of disbelief, to migrate from them to lands of Islam, and not the reverse. The reverse is prohibited in those hadiths I referred to just now, among them his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): .
Also his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): So the Messenger (peace be upon him) alluded to the obligation of a Muslim keeping his residence away from the residence of a mushrik by saying: meaning: if both the Muslim and the mushrik light a fire in front of their house, in front of their tent, then due to the distance between them, one of them barely sees the fire of the other. So when the hadith says: it is an allusion to not mixing, and to the obligation of a Muslim keeping his distance from a mushrik in his residence, in his mixing with him. He affirmed this meaning in another hadith, which is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him and his family): .
The intended meaning here: in the word meaning: mixing. And because a man has intercourse with his wife, he mixes with her to the greatest extent possible of mixing, but the root of the word implies absolute mixing and intercourse. Therefore, when he (peace be upon him) said: meaning: whoever mixes with him. The secret of his (peace be upon him) prohibition of a Muslim residing with a mushrik: it came in the famous proverb in some lands, which is the saying: "Nature is a thief." And this, without doubt, is what established and founded this meaning is our Prophet (may the prayers and peace of Allah be upon him) in some of the authentic hadiths that came from him.
Among the most famous of these hadiths and among their authentic ones: his saying (peace be upon him): The righteous companion meaning: he gives to you for free,
As for the bad companion, he is like the blacksmith: either he burns your clothes, or you smell a foul odor from him. So you, O Muslim, are not free from benefiting from mixing with the righteous in one of the ways of those benefits mentioned by the Messenger (peace be upon him), just as you do not escape being harmed by your mixing with the bad companion, whose example is the blacksmith, .
From here, the hadiths came ordering the Muslim to accompany the Muslim. So he (peace be upon him) said: The second sentence, in my opinion, is an affirmation of the first sentence ; because it is assumed of the Muslim that he does not invite one who does not benefit from his knowledge, his character, or his religion, and likewise he does not invite him except one who is like him. So his (peace be upon him) saying in the second sentence: is an affirmation of the meaning of the first sentence, meaning: do not invite to your house except one who is pious and a believer.
This hadith also affirms the meanings that gathered in the previous hadiths.