What is the danger of imitating the disbelievers and mingling with them in their lands?

So you, O Muslim, if you mingle with the righteous, you will inevitably gain something from their righteousness, whether a little or a lot. And the opposite is the opposite: if you keep the company of the wicked and open sinners, you will inevitably gain something of their wickedness and corruption, whether a little or a lot, as we said earlier. And likewise his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): . "Jama'" means to mingle with him and live with him. Whoever mingles with a mushrik (one who associates partners with Allah) is like him, meaning he is affected by him and becomes like him in his actions. The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) emphasized this meaning in another hadith, which is a wonderful hadith in terms of how it depicts how a Muslim should distance himself from a disbeliever. He said (peace and blessings be upon him): . This means that in the past, as you know, they would light fires in their tents or in front of their tents, so one could tell from afar that there was a house made of cloth or a tent, and a traveler would head toward it. The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . This means that the dwelling of one should not be close to the other, to the point where one can see the other's fire. Rather, one should go far away, very far, so that he does not see the fires, no matter how blazing or how intensely they rise to the sky. He does not see them because the Muslim has distanced himself from the dwelling of this mushrik so as not to be affected by his customs, traditions, and morals. This is a reality we feel, unfortunately, in this age. We feel it collectively, without needing to be told to look; no, everyone is like this. They have been affected by the disbelieving societies that have dominated the Islamic lands, let alone the disbelieving societies that Muslims have unfortunately sought out for knowledge, or for material gain, or the like. Muslims, until a little over a century ago, did not know some of the customs that we live with today in the majority of Muslims. Muslims in the past never knew that a man would effeminate and become effeminate by shaving his beard, and sometimes with his beard, his mustache, becoming like a woman, especially if he is a young, fresh-faced youth, where you can hardly distinguish him from a beautiful, graceful girl, and so on. This custom was never known before the colonization of these lands or those lands by the disbelievers. Likewise, what is lighter than that: you used to see Muslims rushing to their works, let alone entering their mosques with their heads bare and uncovered—with the note or warning that there is a difference between shaving the beard, which is open sinfulness, and uncovering the head, which is a lapse in Islamic etiquette. How did this and that come to be? The Europeans came, the English came here and to Egypt, and they brought their customs. The French occupied Syria, and they also brought their customs. We were in Syria in some of the periods that passed through us. The British army came after the French army withdrew. The French army, or perhaps the French people as a whole, had the custom that men shave their mustaches and beards. So this misguidance spread among the Muslim youth in our Syria, because the French colonial rule governed our lands for perhaps twenty-five to thirty years; I do not remember the history well. When the French left, as is said, never to return, and the British took their place, and the British shave their beards and keep their mustaches, social life among the Syrians changed. The youth used to be clean-shaven with a mustache and beard; now they keep what? Their mustaches? Why? That is what colonialism is. This is a real proof that the environment affects its inhabitants, especially if the environment is supported by material power or moral power. But I say it is booby-trapped; because many of the ignorant, when they look at the power of these European or American disbelievers, are taken in by it, and they think that they are on something of guidance and light, whereas they are in manifest error. I said we see this effect in the general society, but there are effects that appear in some individuals due to something related to their person, and not just the society in which they live and reside. It was decreed for me that I traveled about twenty years ago to some European countries, to Switzerland, for example, and Britain, Germany, and Spain, which is the lost Andalus, due to the open sinfulness of the Muslims and their crime, and history repeats itself. We left London, having been invited to visit a village where there were some Pakistani Islamic preachers from the group of Maududi (may Allah have mercy on him). And that was on one of the days of Ramadan. The man honored us, and his demeanor was cheerful, bearded, but from another angle, it was sad. Why? Because he had tightened the collar around his neck, meaning the graphite that they call it. We sat at the table to break our fast, talking, and I, as my duty, starting from the saying of my Prophet: . I saw that this man had good Islamic culture, and he also had piety, because he was bearded in the land of disbelief and error. But what about this knot? So I spoke about the principle of imitating the disbelievers, and the prohibition of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) in more than one hadith of imitating the disbelievers. The most famous of these hadiths is what Imam Ahmad narrated in his Musnad from the hadith of Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-As (may Allah be pleased with him). He said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . I knocked on this door with an expansiveness that the time now does not allow, or something like it. But the man was as I hoped of him; he understood the matter well and responded to us with immediate action, where he reached out his hand while he was eating and untied the knot and threw it on the ground. We said, praise be to Allah. But my joy had hardly been completed when it was followed by sorrow, meaning the opposite of joy. How so? And here is the point. He said, "In fact, I did not put it on to imitate them." Look now, here is a terrible joke. He said, "I did not put it on to imitate them, but the people here, meaning the British, have a special view of the Palestinians who are there. The Palestinians' custom, he says, is that they open their shirt from here, button it, and do not put on this knot, so it has become a symbol of the Palestinians among the British. If they see this appearance or look at this scene, they judge that this is a Palestinian. And what does Palestinian mean to them? It means this is refuse, meaning this person has no value. Look at what the Muslim preacher says? He says, "So that the British do not look at us with this degrading look, I put it on." I said, "May Allah forgive you, you ruined it." I said, "You are giving weight to the look of these disbelievers, and among your Muslim brothers. This means our Lord says: . You reversed the matter; you removed the good with this bad. So I hope you will repent to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) from this saying and this word; because you made me understand, and here is the point, that you are affected by the concepts of these people, and by their traditions, customs, and tastes, to the extent that you responded to them unconsciously and put on this knot so that they would not look at you with that look. Look then, how the first hadith . So this departure from what the Shari'ah of Islam brought confirms to every Muslim that he should surround himself with a righteous society; because righteousness produces righteousness, and corruption produces corruption. So we ask Allah (Mighty and Majestic) to inspire us to proceed in all our works and lives following the guidance of our Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), and to cause us to die upon tawhid (the oneness of Allah) and correct faith. Glory be to You, O Allah, and with Your praise, I bear witness that there is no god but You. I seek Your forgiveness and I repent to You.
What can we do, do we need to pray, or is there no time? Because we said that in his question there are two branches. We spoke about the first branch, and the speech about the other branch remains. We do not say the second; because the second calls for a third, and we do not have a third—(he laughs, may Allah have mercy on him).
The student: May Allah bless you.

The Shaykh: And so it remains for us to answer the second branch, which is: Is it obligatory for him to surrender himself to the Shari'ah court so that the hudud (fixed Qur'anic punishments) he deserves is carried out? The answer is no, it is not obligatory for him to do so, although it is permissible. And we must distinguish between "it is not obligatory" and "it is permissible." This is indicated by a set of texts, some of which are guidance from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) for everyone who commits or commits a sin to cover it up and not...