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This content has been automatically translated. View original in Arabic
Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah
Dear brothers, there is a serious matter that many of us, who are associated with jihad—whether in combat, theory, or commentary—have been drawn into recently, especially after the fighting in northern Syria. We isolate ourselves through the way we approach the problem, which makes others feel that we only see Salafi-Jihadi groups on the scene. It seems that we are more concerned with solving their problems than with the problems of others, as if the others are second-class Muslims.
We may not intend this nor believe it. In fact, many of us have left our homes and sacrificed ourselves to support these very people. However, focusing our efforts and language in a particular direction may give the impression that we no longer see them.
Who are we? Those of us who call ourselves followers of the method? Which method? The clear method of intending to establish Sharia and rejecting democracy and man-made constitutions.
Who are the others? They are the general public and the non-methodical factions fighting for a legitimate goal of self-defense and honor. If you tell them about Sharia, they say, "We hear and obey." They do not know what democracy or secularism is, nor do they fight for the account of any coalition or military. They have not fought a Muslim for his Islam nor demonstrated against an infidel upon him. We ask them, "What is your method?" and they say, "What method? We are simple dervishes, brother."
My discussion here is not about the factions fighting to implement external agendas. I am not talking about the factions created in the eyes of the international system with the support of functional states and conferences by the orders of bodies that declare their will for a sovereign state in which the law of Allah is not established. Nor will I address here the problem of reducing the method to rejecting democracy.
Rather, I want to say: Even we who blame those who rejected the independent arbitration, and the majority of Syrian Muslims have gradually disappeared from our discourse, do you know, my brothers, what we are doing about that? We make the general public in Syria feel that we are fighting our battle on their land. We prove to ourselves what the forces of disbelief initially failed to prove against us: that we do not represent the Ummah, but we have imposed ourselves upon it.
We are squandering the greatest opportunity that Allah has granted us in the contemporary time, the opportunity for the jihadi spirit to spread among the Syrian people so that they adopt the project of liberation and the establishment of the religion that they profess in reality in their lives and embrace it. So that the seizure of the project becomes like the seizure of the spirit from the body of this Muslim people.
We isolate ourselves to the point where the eradication of the elite with the method becomes as easy as the eradication of a foreign thorn in the body.
I am truly pained when we circulate news about leaders in a faction with a method who have been eliminated, and one of the other ordinary Muslims puts up a picture of his brother or friend and says, "People, this one is also an oppressed victim who was killed. Do you not have mercy on him? Do you not demand his rights?" People are now ashamed of us, brothers in Islam, and they remind us that the blood of Muslims is equal.
If we continue to make them feel that they are of a second degree with us and not part of our capital because they are not followers of the method, we will tempt them away from their religion and transfer them from the scale of our good deeds to the scale of our bad deeds. A disaster worse than transferring them from the ranks of our brothers to the ranks of our enemies in this world.
The factions that fight for a legitimate goal and do not carry out external agendas, these are our brothers. How wrong we are when we want to prove to the people of excess that we are pure in method, so we resort to talking about these people, about our brothers, as if they are accused. We try to prove their innocence. What is their innocence? That they are not infidels, and we threaten them that if we see infidelity from them, we will stand against them! Instead of showing them loyalty and love because they are Muslims.
They did not know jihad or knowledge or method before, and they lived under a system of ignorance and oppression for decades. Our enemies tempt them with money to fight us, but their religion and brotherhood prevent them from surrendering to us, and they say, "Yes, we want the religion of Allah to prevail."
How wrong we are when we fear to praise these brothers, lest it be used against us and our method by those with sharp tongues who are stingy with good, and they describe us as servants of popular patronage! As if the people's affection and gentleness with them is not from the religion of Allah, as if the Messenger of Allah did not spend great wealth to win the hearts of the polytheists! These brothers are Muslims, not polytheists, and they do not want from us what we would not accept from them, but they want from us a kind word, appreciation, and the feeling that we see them as our brothers. How unjust we are if we deprive them of these words to please those who do not understand the Prophet's Sunnah in winning the hearts of people.
How severe our condition is if we fear to praise them today lest they deviate tomorrow, so that the followers of mistakes and their inventors can then reproach us with our old praise of them. We prefer to be cautious for our reputation and leave our brothers to the harshness of the road, just as we do with those we see as brothers in method.
These are our brothers, the common people who fight the enemy and the attacking infidel, who are more beloved and precious to us than the pure in method in the narrow definition. They have diverted the compass of the struggle. It is true that revolutions need elites with a method to become a jihad with insight leading to liberation and the establishment of the religion of Allah and preventing the deviation of the path and the theft of the fruits, but the relationship of these elites with the rest of the components of the revolution must be a complementary and cooperative relationship, not a superior and dominant one.
In addition, among those we consider others are religious and missionary elites and people of knowledge in matters other than jihad and not of the Salafi-Jihadi direction described, and among them are specialists in various fields of life without whom the project of establishing the religion of Allah cannot be accomplished. These are our brothers. If we teach them the method, we learn from them sacrifice, steadfastness, and faith, and we have seen them being slaughtered and burned to disbelieve, saying, "There is no god but Allah, we have none but You, O Allah."
One of the most important signs of the purity of the method is loyalty to those who were slaughtered and burned, so they burned and slaughtered with them a covenant of subjugation and humiliation, and they departed from this world without their hands being stained with the blood of Muslims for the sake of power or arrogance. Those who did not know the method but had faith like mountains in their hearts in what we consider.
Our brothers whom we have neglected in the recent period include many who can be like these. A few words and attention to them will ignite in them springs of sacrifice and ransom for Islam. It is not fair, reasonable, or in accordance with the Sharia or the purity of the method to neglect them to please anyone.
Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah.