What is the criterion for considering the changing circumstances in our time, and what is the impact of that, for example, on defining the abode of disbelief and the abode of Islam?

The questioner : The variation of circumstances and the reversal of balances in our time means that the matter requires new independent legal reasoning (ijtihad) on the subject, based on those same principles and on the jurisprudence of the circumstances of this reality. It is possible to arrive at a new description, meaning one other than the description of the abode of disbelief or the abode of Islam. We found that the Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah provided a solution to a problem in his time, the problem of Mardin, by giving it a new description that no one before him had given, when he said, "It is a station between two stations." If we look at the lands of the Arabs and Muslims, we find that the rituals of the religion are established and Muslims are the majority in those lands, but at the same time, there are dominant manifestations of disbelief, and there are rulings and laws of disbelief. We can say that this is also a station between the two stations, and we can describe it with a new description, without pedantic argument over terminology, by saying it is the abode of Muslims. It is not the abode of disbelief as Mecca was before the migration, nor is it the abode of Islam one hundred percent as the Prophet’s city (Madinah al-Munawwarah) is. Rather, it is a station between the two stations. It is incumbent upon the callers from among the people of Islam and the scholars to strive to transition this abode, which is the abode of Muslims, so that it becomes the abode of Islam one hundred percent. We found in the Prophetic biography a stage similar to this, and we do not know if our ijtihad in this is correct or not. That is the stage of Yathrib after the Pledge of Aqabah and before the migration of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). The situation there was better than the situation in Mecca; the rituals were somewhat established, there was congregational prayer, and our master Mus'ab ibn Umayr was the leader of this stage. The Islamic tide was spreading through peaceful da'wah into the depths of disbelief until he was able to prepare Yathrib to become Madinah al-Munawwarah through the migration of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). Of course, this ijtihad that we are trying to perform is not for the sake of the classification itself, but to arrive at a method of da'wah, namely that we must work in the manner of Mus'ab ibn Umayr to transition the lands of the Arab Muslims, which are an abode between two stations, to become the abode of Islam through peaceful da'wah with scholarly reference, just as was the role of our master Mus'ab ibn Umayr in Yathrib. What is your opinion, my master, on this subject?

The Shaykh : I say, after praise to Allah and prayers and peace upon the Messenger of Allah:
It is without doubt or ambiguity that rulings whose source is ijtihad change with the change of time and place, unlike the rulings explicitly stated in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. I intentionally qualified this word because in its unrestricted use, there is a deviation from the Shari'ah when it is said absolutely that "rulings change with the change of time and place." The correct form of this word is that it is restricted to ijtihadi rulings. On this occasion, I mention a story that occurred between me and one of the muftis there in Syria, and the summary that matters to me from it is this: He held that Muslims should remain, each on his own school of jurisprudence (madhhab), and that the door of ijtihad should not be opened, even if one is a person of knowledge. Our discussion and debate with him led to my asking him the following question: What is the ruling on praying in an airplane? Because the airplane did not exist in the old days, as is well known. He said: It is permissible. I said: What is your evidence? He said: By analogy (qiyas) to praying on a ship. I said: Here you have returned to what you fled from. He said: How? I said: You exercised ijtihad, especially since you exercised ijtihad in arguing with a principle from the four principles of evidence, which is the last of them and the weakest, to the extent that some scholars denied it altogether, namely qiyas. What is ijtihad but what you did? The point is not here, but it must be mentioned. I said: Nevertheless, you contradicted your principle, considering that you are a mufti, and it is not permissible for you to issue a fatwa unless you extract the text from the approved book of your madhhab. So you contradicted this principle, and then you contradicted a branch of the branches of the madhhab. I said: Is this what you understood? I said: Because Imam al-Rafi'i, and here is the point now, said in "al-Sharh al-Kabir": "If a man prays on a swing that is not suspended from the ceiling and not supported from the ground, the prayer is invalid." And this is the airplane; it is neither suspended nor supported. He said: I have not seen this. I said: Yes, a person may not encompass the branches, especially since they exist as I mentioned earlier. The point is that ijtihad is necessary in matters whose source is ijtihad and derivation, and not the text. The text must not be contradicted absolutely. Of course, regardless of the rule "Necessities permit the prohibited," because this includes even the definitive texts, as is the evidence of the Noble Qur'an: After this, I say that what you mentioned is a valid point in reality, and it is most similar to the branches, such as water if, for example, impurity falls into it, and a person is perplexed whether it remains in its state of purity, let alone its state of being purifying, or whether it became impure, or whether it became pure but not purifying, and so on. Is this the Islamic reality today? It may be as I mentioned earlier.