What is the meaning of the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): “Whoever fights under a blind banner, out of anger for tribalism or calling to tribalism, and is killed, then his killing is a pre-Islamic killing”?

The student : , so please clarify this issue for us, may Allah reward you with good. I say in advance, my brothers, that I hope you will listen to the answer of our Shaykh. Because many of the questions we received, most of them or the majority of them, revolve around this meaning. Therefore, what I hope for is that you pay attention to the detailed answer, so that the answer to this question alone may suffice for many questions that the brothers have presented to us, and may Allah bless you.

The Shaykh : Praise be to Allah, and prayers and peace be upon the Messenger of Allah. After that: It is obligatory for all Muslims to know that jihad is of two types: jihad to repel the aggression of the disbeliever, and jihad to carry the call to the lands of disbelief. The first type of jihad is never subject to the aforementioned hadith, because in this case, that is, when the disbeliever invades a land of the Muslims, it is obligatory for all Muslims to mobilize entirely, and not to think about any condition that should be present in the jihad that is for carrying the call to the lands of disbelief and misguidance. Raising the Islamic banner, which we constantly talk about and support fully, is only when the Muslims want to prepare themselves and establish their state. That should not be except under an Islamic banner, and they should not fight that type of jihad except under it.
As for the first case, the case where the disbeliever invades a land of the Muslim lands, in this case we do not think about the fulfillment of that condition or any other, but rather it is upon the Muslims to mobilize entirely to repel the greatest danger, which is the attack of the disbelievers on the lands of Islam. Therefore, people today have very narrow thinking when they think about the condition of raising the Islamic banner to repel, for example, the aggression of these disbelievers who have gathered from every side and direction to attack the lands of the Muslims, which is Iraq. Here, it is obligatory for the Islamic states to support the people who are being attacked by the disbelievers, and not to think about whether the state of this people raises the banner of Islam or not. Because in this case, we want to save the Muslim people from the control of that disbeliever or those disbelievers. Here, it is obligatory for all Muslims to mobilize entirely. And the truth is that among the effects of this fitnah (trial) that has befallen the Muslims in this era, for which we do not know a parallel in the entire Islamic history, is that the truth and falsehood become mixed up for the Muslims, and the obligatory becomes mixed up with what is not obligatory, or even with what is not permissible. The cause of this goes back to two things: The first thing relates to the general Muslims, and that is that they are far, very far, from understanding the religion. The other cause relates not to the general Muslims but to their specialists, those specialists who are supposed to study what has befallen the Muslims of fitnah in light of what came in the Book and the Sunnah, and that is what helps them to recognize the Islamic ruling in what has befallen the Muslims.