The Book of Jihad, Expeditions, and Authority-08b

The reciter: Yahya ibn Yahya narrated to us: Al-Mughirah ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Hizami informed us from Abu al-Zinad from al-A'raj from Abu Hurayrah from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), who said: .

The Shaykh : Obedience to the ruler is obedience to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him): the intended meaning is the one whom the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) appointed, not every ruler. For example, the rulers after the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) were not appointed by the Messenger himself. So the hadith here says: "Whoever obeys the ruler," meaning the one I appointed, has obeyed me, because he is my ruler and my deputy, and he has authority from me. And whoever obeys the Messenger has obeyed Allah.
Here, for example, we say that whoever obeys the ruler in our time has obeyed Allah, because Allah said: If Allah had not made it obligatory for us to obey them, we would not have obeyed them. But we obey them because Allah made that obligatory. And the fact that the verb is not repeated is evidence that their obedience is not independent.
And the orders of those in authority are divided into three categories:
The first category is that they order what Allah has ordered. The second category is that they order what Allah has forbidden. And the third category is that they order what has neither a command nor a prohibition in itself.
So in the first category, their obedience is from two angles: First, that they have been ordered by Allah to do it, such as if they order congregational prayer, or order zakah, or fasting, or the like. Here, their obedience is obedience to Allah Mighty and Majestic from two angles: First, that Allah ordered it independently, and second, that He ordered obedience to the rulers in it. As for if they order obedience to what Allah has forbidden, then there is no obedience to them, because they are slaves of Allah and we are slaves of Allah. And if they are slaves of Allah, it is not permissible for them to go out of His obedience. And if they go out of His obedience, it is permissible for us to go out of their obedience, because we are followers of them. So these are not to be obeyed.
So if they said, for example: "You cannot work unless you shave your beard. Shave your beard." Is it permissible for me to shave it? It is not permissible. If they said, "Let your garment hang down to the ankle," we do not obey them, because there is no obedience to a created being in disobedience to the Creator.
The third category is that they order something that has no command or prohibition attached to it in itself. Here, their obedience is obligatory, and there is no consideration for the statement of one who says it is not obligatory, because this is a system. We say, and if it is a system, then we are commanded to obey them. If we rebel against them, the system would be disrupted, and every person would act according to his own opinion, and there would be no benefit from the caliphate and the rulership. So obedience is obligatory in that, even if it is not explicitly commanded for its own sake. And this is the test of the difference between those who follow the Salaf and those who follow the Khawarij. Those who follow the Khawarij say: "There is no obedience to him; this is a system and we do not accept it." They may even declare the ruler and the one who obeys him to be disbelievers, saying, "This is not what Allah has ruled by, and whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, those are the disbelievers." Glory be to Allah! Did Allah rule by this specifically or by its general type? By its general type. Everything that the one in authority orders must be obeyed, except for sin. So these are the three categories regarding the orders of those in authority.
Then the order may be by speech, or by action, or by gesture. By speech: that the one in authority says to a person: "Stand up," and it is obligatory for him to stand up. And by gesture: that he gestures to him, and it is obligatory for him to stand up. For this reason, when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) gestured to the people who were praying standing while he was sitting, they sat down. And in the conquest of Makkah, when he mentioned the Ansar and the scum of Quraysh, he gestured with his hand like this, meaning slaughter. The third is gesture, meaning that he places a sign for the command and a sign for the prohibition. And among that are traffic signals. Traffic signals are signs. The one in authority said: "If the red light appears, stop, and it is not permissible for you to pass, even if it is assumed that there is no one on the road at all. And if it is green, go. And if it is yellow, proceed with caution, according to what the system requires."
And the wonder is that our people, and they are Muslims, do not comply with this except rarely. That is, some of them do not comply and say: "Since the road is empty, why should I stop?" And this is a mistake. Stop now. You were told to stop, so stop.
Now, if the one in authority orders the burning of your property, saying: "Burn your property," and I see, is he to be obeyed or not? There is a detail: If this is a discretionary punishment, meaning that the one ordered deserves to be punished with his property, then it is obligatory for him to obey, because this is permissible for the one in authority. And if it is for its destruction, then it is not permissible, because wasting wealth is forbidden. But if he said, "Either you burn it, or I will kill you or imprison you or the like of that which harms him," then here he burns it to avert harm from himself.
So the important thing is that complying with the orders of those in authority is what preserves security, and preserves the community from chaos, and the person believes that he has a ruler. Because whoever dies and there is no pledge of allegiance on his neck dies the death of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance, may Allah protect us from that. It is not an Islamic death.
And the pledge of allegiance entails obedience. Is it a condition for the obedience of the one in authority that he not be a sinner? The answer is that it is not a condition. Even if he were a drunkard, and afflicted with songs, for example, and oppressive to people in eating wealth, for example, then his obedience is obligatory. Because the condition for the permissibility of disobedience is that he does not order sin. And some of the foolish people, who have a whiff of the Khawarij, think that the condition for that is that he not be a sinner. So if he is a sinner, there is no obedience to him. Glory be to Allah! Where is one found who is not a sinner? There has been no one like that since that time. And the imams, the imams of the Muslims, obeyed the caliphs. They obeyed them while knowing their sins, and their persistence in sins, in songs, in intoxication, and even in what is more severe than that in creed, and going out of the creed of the Salaf. And despite that, they obeyed them and did not disobey them. Rather, they called upon Allah for them, and addressed them as the address of the Commander of the Faithful, and security was established. But despite that, it is obligatory upon the one in authority to do what Allah ordered him to do in striving for the community with what is in the interest of the community, and not to favor anyone in dropping an obligation or in doing a forbidden thing or in assigning it a status it does not deserve. This is the obligation. But if the one in authority neglects his obligation, then it is obligatory upon us to do our obligation, and we ask Allah, who is for us and who is upon him, to Allah Mighty and Majestic.