What is the ruling on leaving out the movement of the finger in the tashahhud out of fear of being expelled from the combat front in Afghanistan?

The questioner : What is your opinion on leaving out the movement of the finger among the Afghans out of fear of being expelled from the front, for fear that they might call him a Wahhabi or something like that? So he is leaving off this sunnah (recommended practice).

The Shaykh : This is a problem. He should fear Allah (Mighty and Majestic) as much as he is able to do so, because moving the finger is a sunnah (recommended practice), and jihad (struggle in the path of Allah) is an obligatory duty. If it becomes predominant in his mind that he will be prevented from jihad, I set conditions for this. If it becomes predominant in his mind that if he performs this sunnah (recommended practice) he will be prevented from the obligatory duty, then in that case it is permissible for him to be lenient regarding the sunnah (recommended practice) between himself and those people, in order to preserve the performance of the obligatory duty. But I believe this condition is not easy to claim to exist; because I hear that there are groups of mujahideen from the people of the Sunnah and the community. So if he does not find a place for jihad among people who fight the Sunnah, then he should move to people who support the Sunnah. If this path becomes narrow for him, then at that time we return to the first fatwa (scholarly legal ruling).

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : And beware of that.