Is it permissible to reside in the lands of disbelief? And is it obligatory for a disbeliever who embraces Islam to migrate to the lands of Islam?

The questioner : Residing in the lands of disbelief, a question about this matter, and adding to it regarding the American people who are Muslims, the Americans who are originally Muslims, is it obligatory for them to migrate from there?

The Shaykh : And is there any doubt about that? For these people, Allah the Exalted said: .
The Shaykh : But before your last question, the first line of it, I do not know if you are firm in your question, so let us answer it?

The questioner : I would be grateful if you would answer it.

The Shaykh : May Allah bless you. In my opinion, the first line of the question is implicitly understood from the answer to the second line of it, but perhaps it is better to clarify what came in the Sunnah of authentic hadiths that warn the Muslim against settling in the lands of disbelief. There is in the science of jurisprudence and principles a type of analogical reasoning called the stronger analogy. If the people of a land, by birth and inheritance, do not embrace Islam, it is obligatory for them to migrate to the lands of Islam, so it is all the more so for one who is the opposite of that, who was born in the lands of Islam and grew up and was raised there, that it is not permissible for him to travel, and I do not say migrate, to the lands of disbelief. This is all the more so. But with that, I say that the hadiths came one after another to prohibit the Muslim from traveling to the lands of disbelief. Among them is the hadith narrated by Abu Dawud in his Sunan from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that he said, in the most concise phrase: . And "cohabitation" here means mixing, that is, living together. And other hadiths came confirming this meaning with a clearer phrase. He (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . This is an allusion that it is obligatory for the Muslim to have his dwelling far from the dwelling of the polytheist, because it was the custom of the Arabs that they would light fires in front of their houses, in front of their tents, so the fire would be visible to the one coming from afar. So it is as if the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) is saying to the Muslim: Go far, go as far as you can, so that the fire of the polytheist disbeliever is not visible to you. The fire of the Muslim and the polytheist should not be visible to each other. This is also confirmed by a third hadith, which is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): .
The Shaykh : These are very clear texts that confirm that it is not permissible for the Muslim to reside among the polytheists. And the wisdom of that is very clear, not from the logical or rational or experiential side, because that is a secondary matter regarding the transmitted texts. There are some hadiths that can be relied upon to take the answer to a question that may occur to some minds when they hear those hadiths: What is the secret? What is the purpose? What is the wisdom of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibiting the Muslim from mixing with the polytheists?
The Shaykh : There are two hadiths appropriate to mention as an answer to this question. The first is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): . This is the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) giving an example of a small gathering, a small gathering where you sit with one person, an individual. He says to you: If he is good, his example is like that of a seller of musk, to the end of the hadith. Or if he is bad, he is like a blacksmith, either he will burn your clothes or you will smell a foul odor from him.
The Shaykh : The second hadith that confirms the first, and reality also increases its confirmation, is what Imam Muslim, and perhaps al-Bukhari also, narrated in the Sahih from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that he said: . He, from before, directed him to a monk, that is, a worshipper of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance, so he gave him a ruling based on his ignorance, and the outcome of his affair was that he was joined with the previous ones among the killed. The second time, he directed him to a scholar. . Here the point is: "in a bad land." . To the end of the hadith, which is known, if Allah wills. The point is that this scholar was well-versed in the jurisprudence of these hadiths. And this does not prevent that these hadiths were told to us by the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), nor does it prevent that this may be from the jurisprudence of the Prophets before him (peace be upon them), because they all drew from the same source. So this scholar understood this reality that the polluted environment may infect the righteous person if he mixes with it. And its example from the material, disease aspects is the diseases that are contagious. And therefore, the known quarantine today came about, and the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) established its rule in the well-known hadith: . And so on.
The Shaykh : So when the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibited the Muslims from settling in the lands of disbelief, it was only to preserve their creed, their worship, and their conduct. Therefore, he made it obligatory, not for the polytheists—this is a very important matter, and perhaps I have rarely addressed it—when we speak about such an issue, the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) or the Wise Lawgiver made it obligatory for the polytheists, when they embrace Islam, to migrate to the lands of Islam. Indeed, he made it obligatory for the Bedouins to migrate from their deserts to their cities. This also takes into account the same meaning, because the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) says in some hadiths: . So if the Bedouin, after he has learned the oneness of Allah and learned what is obligatory for him to correct his faith and Islam, then returns to his desert and lives in it, he may be influenced by the roughness that is the nature of the Bedouins. So if the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) first urged the Bedouins to return to the cities, and then linked to that a legal ruling, which is that they have no right to the war spoils that the Muslims gain by fighting the disbelievers, then it is all the more so that it is obligatory for the Muslims to be bound to their homelands and not to move to the lands of disbelief, shirk, and misguidance, especially in these days. Because you know that the Jews and the Christians, even though they are misguided due to their first deviation from the oneness of Allah that was conveyed to them by their prophets, and then due to their disbelief in our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), they were nonetheless on something of good conduct and good morals, and so on. And whoever is in my age or close to it knows that the women of the Christians in the lands of Islam used to cover themselves with a hijab better than that of many Muslim women today. And the meaning of this statement is that the People of the Book did not have the spread of open sinfulness, lewdness, and immodesty that the sensible ones, if there are any sensible ones among these disbelievers in their lands, have begun to complain about. So how is it permissible for a Muslim to expose himself to this society that is subject to this moral disintegration and moral dissolution? This is all I have as an answer to that question.

The questioner : These hadiths: some people interpret them to mean that all of these hadiths contain a type of command to migrate to the Holy City of Madinah. Migration was a command from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) for the people, the Muslims, to migrate to him. So those who did not migrate had committed this sin. Therefore, these hadiths mean that it is obligatory for a Muslim to migrate to the abode of Islam when the Muslims have an imam who commands them to migrate to him. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) himself, when Makkah was conquered, said: So he stopped this migration, meaning he did not ask the people who were in the lands of shirk to come to him, because he said: And the hadith: is synonymous with the verse: So this is the meaning of "I am free from them." The meaning of "free from them" is that they have no right of citizenship in the Holy City of Madinah in the Muslim state. Therefore, he is free from their blood if war occurs between him and them and they come with the polytheists, or if he raids a group of polytheists and they are among them and he kills some of them because they did not migrate, as in some hadiths where some Muslims came with the polytheists at Badr and were killed, and the Muslims did not sin in killing them. And in this same hadith: there is a completion in its beginning and end, which I may not quote verbatim, but its implication is that the Muslims raided a group of polytheists and there were Muslims among them. So the Muslims who were with the polytheists prostrated to alert the Muslims that they were Muslims, but they were killed quickly. So the Muslims complained about this, asking how they killed their brothers. Then the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: So if these hadiths are interpreted as a command to migrate, and migration is a command to migrate to the abode of Islam, and it is conditional upon the existence of an imam and a Muslim state that commands migration, even the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), when he said: this command ended. Is this interpretation of these hadiths acceptable and possible?

The Shaykh : I believe, as they say, without offense: you have strayed far from the point. I do not know if you feel with me that we have addressed the answer to your two-part question, one of which relates to the migration you are currently circling around, and the other relates to, I do not say repeating what I said earlier, I do not say regarding the migration of a Muslim to the land of the disbeliever, but rather his travel to the land of disbelief. So I see you now circling around not only the hadith or hadiths that command the disbeliever to migrate from the land of disbelief to the land of Islam, but also the verse that I referred to earlier. You are circling around this specific point. And in answer to this circling, I say: I was pleased with you when you said that some people interpret these texts with this interpretation, but I feared that you might not mean the technical meaning of the word "interpretation" (ta'wil), because linguistically, ta'wil can mean explanation (tafsir). So I feared that by the word "interpretation" you meant "explanation." And this fear became apparent to me finally when you used the word "explanation" (tafsir). So I think you do not mean ta'wil in the technical sense, but rather ta'wil in the sense of explanation.

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : Okay, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), as you mentioned exactly, said: Is this text, as far as you know, general or specific?

The questioner : General in what do you mean, excuse me?

The Shaykh : I mean, is there no migration absolutely to any Islamic country from any disbeliever country, or is there no migration only to Madinah?

The questioner : This is the question being raised: does "no migration" mean no migration to the Holy City of Madinah, or does "no migration" mean there is no obligation to migrate to the lands of the Muslims, and the command to come to the abode of the Muslims was only the command to migrate...

The Shaykh : I did not understand that this was a question; I understood that this was an explanation of those texts and applying them to the migration that was previously obligatory and then became abrogated by his saying (peace be upon him): That is how I understood your words, and I did not understand that you directed this question that I directed to you. His saying (peace be upon him): Does it mean no migration absolutely, or does it mean no migration to Madinah, because Allah supported His Prophet and honored His army and established his religion in Madinah? After that, there was no need after Islam and the Muslims were established in their land and their state was established.
Because the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) had planned, by the command of Allah (Mighty and Majestic), for the Muslims to gather and cluster in the abode of Madinah for their state to be established and for them to gather to fight the disbelievers in Makkah who had weakened the believers and tortured them. So when Allah (Mighty and Majestic) supported His Prophet and honored His army and conquered Makkah, he said: And therefore I mention here a rule: what I quoted earlier from some of them, the meaning of that is resorting to the abrogation of many, many texts, the first of which is the verse that says: So I want to mention that abrogation is only resorted to when two authentic texts conflict in a way that is completely divergent and cannot be reconciled by any of the known methods of reconciliation among scholars, some of whom have brought it to more than a hundred methods. So when it is not possible to combine them by the first, second, or third method, then it is said this is the abrogating and this is the abrogated, or the reverse. And this has a very important condition, which is that the earlier and the later must be known. So abrogation is not resorted to until all paths to combining the texts are blocked. And here there is absolutely no necessity and no need, not only necessity, no need to resort to claiming the abrogation of the verse, let alone the hadiths we mentioned earlier, that the Wise Lawgiver encouraged the Bedouins to migrate from their desert to their city to have what the Muslims in general have of war spoils. Abrogating these texts while it is possible to combine them by the meaning we know from all scholars in their explanation of the hadith: meaning no migration to Madinah, this is what was lifted. But migration from the lands of disbelief to the lands of Islam, its door is open and continues until the Day of Resurrection. And this is mentioned in the inherited creeds, generation after generation. Just as they say jihad continues until the Day of Resurrection, so they say migration continues until the Day of Resurrection. And perhaps there is a hadith on this specific matter, but I do not recall it now. I do not know if some of our brothers mention this...

The questioner : It is: .

The Shaykh : This is the proof. But all this talk is about migration from the lands of disbelief to the lands of Islam, which means that this is not abrogated. What is abrogated is only migration to Madinah. Meaning, if a Muslim migrated today from Madinah to Makkah, no one would say to him why did you go against it? No, let alone if he migrated from another country to Makkah without Madinah, no one would deny this thing absolutely. So migration continues until the Day of Resurrection from the lands of disbelief to the lands of Islam. But our important subject in reality is related to the Muslims who were afflicted with traveling from their lands to the lands of disbelief. So these texts I mentioned earlier cannot be interpreted in the technical sense, and I do not mean explaining them. It is not permissible to interpret them as having become abrogated, because these have no relation to his saying (peace be upon him): These are the opposite of those, as we presented earlier. And we said that there is in Islamic jurisprudence an analogy called the analogy of stronger evidence (qiyas awla). So we said if the Wise Lawgiver commanded the one who resides in the lands of disbelief and Allah has guided him to Islam to migrate to the lands of Islam, how does he allow the one who is a Muslim by birth and lives in an Islamic land, how does he allow him to go to the lands of disbelief and settle there? And , . However, we say if we notice the meaning we understood from the hadith of the man who killed a hundred souls without right, and that wise scholar, the doctor, said to him: So this wisdom is that it is said to the one who lives in the land of sin and lewdness that he should seek a land less sinful and lewd than it, let alone one less disbelieving and misguided, and not the complete opposite, that it is said leave an Islamic land and travel to the lands of disbelief.
So, what is it that drives these people to travel to the lands of disbelief rather than to other Islamic lands? I often hear from some people that we are forced to reside in these lands because we were expelled from our homelands against our will. We know this, unfortunately, to be a bitter truth. But what we say to them is: You were not commanded to travel to the land where you are now settled. You were expelled from your country, a Muslim country, and then you chose, by your own pure choice, to reside in a disbeliever's country, whether it is America, Britain, Germany, France, or elsewhere. So this is not an excuse. I imagine that so-and-so was forced out of his home, and I am one of those people. But when I chose a Muslim country, I chose it purely by my own choice. So why do those people choose the land of disbelief and misguidance? Because of the material profits. If they had not traveled there, just as some of the weak and oppressed traveled from Makkah to Abyssinia the first and second time, fleeing only from oppression and to a land of safety, as described in some hadiths, they would not have traveled for that reason. Because they could have found that safety in an Islamic country, and found work to sustain themselves with lawful provision, similar to that or close to it. But what makes them prefer traveling to those lands is the material profit. And this is a trial from another angle, which the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) pointed to in the well-known authentic hadith: or as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said. And I know, or I feel, the impact of the disbeliever's environment and its taste on the Muslim, whether he is aware of it or not.
The following story happened to me, and it contains a lesson for everyone who takes heed. It was decreed for me to travel to Europe, and specifically to Britain. I stayed there for days and visited some Islamic preachers. It was the month of Ramadan, and I was informed of a noble preacher in a village one hundred and twenty kilometers from London by car. So we traveled and sat down for the iftar meal. The preacher was a young man, about thirty-five or forty years old, and he was either Pakistani or Indian, of course a Muslim, and he spoke Arabic with clear eloquence. He was dressed in Islamic attire with a beard, but he was wearing a jacket and trousers, and in addition to the jacket, these ties. So, in the spirit of advising the man, especially since I had heard good praise about him, I began to speak about the topic that whoever imitates a people is one of them, and another topic that sometimes confuses some people with the first, which is opposing the polytheists. The hadiths that command the Muslim to oppose the polytheist. The command to oppose the polytheist is more important than the prohibition of imitating the polytheist. This is clear in his (peace be upon him) saying, as in Sahih al-Bukhari: White hair is a dye from Allah that a person does not control; it is imposed on the Muslim and the disbeliever, on the righteous and the wicked. Yet he (peace be upon him) said: You grow white hair and the disbeliever grows white hair, so oppose him by dyeing your hair and beard. I discussed this topic with him, and out of the goodness of his heart, he responded immediately. This is rare; we seldom find such a quick response. We were eating, so he took it off and threw it on the ground. But he said something, and I wish he had not said it, and here is the point. He said: "By Allah, I did not put on this tie except because the English here look at our Palestinian brothers, who, as you do, Doctor, wear a shirt without a tie, with the button undone. They look at them with a look of denial or dislike or something similar." I said: "So that is why you put it on? I wish you had not said this. You are giving importance to this English look at your Muslim brothers, so you want not to share their appearance, so that the English have a good opinion of you and continue to have a bad opinion of your Palestinian brothers." My point is that this man is noble and a preacher, but he was affected by the British environment, which looks at some Muslims in that way. So he thought he could escape such a look by dressing in their attire. This is a small part of the great impact that many young Muslims feel when they settle in the lands of disbelief. And so it has become my habit, and I have been afflicted, and I hope, if Allah wills, that I have been afflicted with good, by this telephone. Every night, questions come to me from various countries, even from these countries from which we warn our Muslim brothers. Recently, I do not know which of our brothers was here, one called from Belgium, I forgot his name, and by Allah, they rarely call from there. He says to me, "I am calling you from America," "I am from Britain," "I am from Hungary," "I am from Germany," and so on. I say to him: "I hope Allah saves you immediately from the lands of disbelief." Then there is a discussion with many of them. Some of them, and this is from the favor of Allah upon us and upon people, say: "By Allah, we listened to your tapes, we were convinced, and we felt the harm of residing in these lands, but getting out of them is not easy and requires preparations." One of them called me back three times by telephone. He said: "I have debts of so many thousands, I do not know if he said dinars or something else, and I cannot return to my country now, or I will be imprisoned until I gather this money and can clear my conscience of this debt." So the point is: the religion is advice, the religion is advice, the religion is advice. It is not permissible for a Muslim to leave his Muslim country. And by Muslim country, I mean in the Shari'ah sense, not the regional sense, meaning all the lands of Islam. But I know, with great regret, that a Muslim cannot enter many of them, and if he can enter them, he cannot reside in them. I know this. But they are not all the same in terms of restriction. So, in the spirit of the religion being advice, I insist on these Muslims who have settled in the lands of disbelief to return to the lands of Islam by any means. Poverty and patience, this is the natural state for the Muslim But I say the problem of Muslims today is that they lose two very important pillars that we always talk about: purification and education. Purifying Islam from what has entered it that is foreign to it, and educating upon this foundation. Today, education is for a hard life and a life of poverty, which most people do not know. So they justify to themselves migrating to the lands of disbelief in order to obtain money, and then they rationalize to themselves that they will return one day to their lands after they have brought the money. Was the righteous Salaf like this, or did they have the patience of Ayyub (peace be upon him) until Allah opened the lands for them?
And I am pleased on this occasion that Abu Hurayrah, who was from the people of the Suffah, used to sleep in the mosque, having no shelter and no wife. Later, he married a woman. There is a wonderful story about him that none of you remembers, perhaps he served her or something like that, and then she became his wife. That is not the important point. He became a governor in a certain land. He took out a handkerchief and started spitting in it. So he said: "Kha, kha, Abu Hurayrah is spitting in a handkerchief." He looked at his situation and his previous situation. Allah is the Greatest. But the truth is that patience is the key to relief. But Muslims need education. And so those who migrate to those lands either have a deficiency in their understanding of Islam, and this is common among people, or they have a deficiency in proper Islamic education, and this is even more common among people. And so we advise them to return to their country...