Is it permissible for Muslims who are oppressed in their lands to seek refuge in the lands of disbelief out of dire necessity?

The questioner : Praise be to Allah, who has gathered me with the narrator of the era and the imam of the people of the Sunnah and the community, the renewer of the religious affairs of this Ummah, the Shaykh Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (may Allah preserve him and prolong his life). My question, O Shaykh, is regarding the Libyan brothers. They heard, I mean, a fatwa from years ago, I mean a fatwa on emigrating from Libya, and they left. But they were harmed in all the lands, I mean the lands of the Muslims. And my question is, I mean, can he go to the lands of the disbelievers from that perspective?

The Shaykh : You asked me this question and I answered it for you.

The questioner : O Shaykh, the brothers who are in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, and so on, want me to... I mean, the fatwa was heard. And the brothers' question is: Is it permissible for them to go to the lands of the disbelievers in order to seek political asylum or to change their nationality? I mean, knowing that they were harmed and imprisoned, and they were handed over to the countries, they were handed over to Libya in the past, O Shaykh. May Allah reward you.

The Shaykh : I understood some of it and did not understand some of it.
The student : He says: Is it permissible for Muslims who are oppressed in their lands and who have left them to seek refuge in the lands of disbelief out of dire necessity?

The Shaykh : I answered this, but there is a remainder in his speech that I did not understand.
The student : He wants it recorded.

The Shaykh : He wants it recorded.

The questioner : From the perspective of changing nationality, O Shaykh. Going to the lands of the disbelievers to change nationality, O Shaykh.

The Shaykh : Did you see how there is something? You cut it off.
The student: Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh : And upon you be peace, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.
The student : There is static, O Shaykh.

The Shaykh : Static.
The student : What does that mean?

The Shaykh : Interference, I mean.

The questioner : Yes.

The Shaykh : It is Syrian language, this. I hope for all good.

The questioner : May Allah reward you.

The Shaykh : When will you take the tape?

The questioner : If Allah wills.

The Shaykh : When will you take the tape?
The student : He does not know the system.
Another student: Be easy on him.

The Shaykh : I say: Praise be to Allah, we praise Him, seek His help, and seek His forgiveness. 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 misguides, there is no one who can guide him. And I bear witness that there is no deity but Allah alone, with no partner, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger. As for what follows, we have spoken at length and repeated the speech regarding what many Muslims today are afflicted with, namely traveling to the lands of disbelief, open sinfulness, and lewdness, whether to Europe or America. And that is not permissible for many, many proofs. And I have no need now to repeat the speech and mention these proofs, for there are many tapes. But based on this established in the Shari'ah, upon which those proofs are built, we say: It is not permissible for one who is compelled to leave his Muslim land to emigrate to a disbeliever's land except within certain, defined, and precise limits and conditions. So I say, starting from the jurisprudential maxim that says, "Necessities permit the prohibited," but this maxim is not absolute; rather, it is restricted by their saying, "Necessity is estimated by its degree." So if a Muslim is compelled to emigrate from his Muslim land, he must, above all else, aim and direct himself toward a Muslim land that is better than the others, whether in terms of the application of rulings, or in terms of the morals of the people of that state and their beliefs, and so on. If that is not facilitated for him, then to a land below that, and so on, until we imagine that the doors are closed before him from all Islamic lands, as the questioner imagines for me or as it is depicted to me in the question. And there remains for this one who is compelled to emigrate from his Muslim land nothing but to travel—and I do not say emigrate—to a disbeliever's land. I also say here that he must choose the land with the least evil, the opposite of what we said regarding his emigration to an Islamic land, where he chooses the most Islamic land for its Islam, and so on, as we said, until the doors of all the lands are closed before him and he is compelled to travel to a disbeliever's land. Then he chooses the land with the least evil. The land with the least evil has many aspects. A land like the Soviet lands, for example, the communist ones, which closed the Islamic mosques, let alone allowing the building of a new mosque. Whereas there are disbeliever and lewd lands where open sinfulness is spread like an epidemic, but nevertheless, as a policy, they allow those they call Islamic communities to build mosques or to take buildings and convert them into mosques. There is no doubt that such a land has less evil than that land, and so on. The important thing is that this Muslim who emigrated from his land in the path of Allah—and I say "claimed," for "claimed" sometimes means "said" and sometimes is mixed with another meaning, so it includes both—so whoever left his land claiming to be an emigrant in the path of Allah (Exalted is He), this jurisprudential and Shari'ah sequence must follow until it is said that he is compelled to reside in a disbeliever's land.