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This content has been automatically translated. View original in Arabic
Praise be to Allah and peace and blessings upon the Messenger of Allah.
Dear brothers, peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah.
This word is a response to questions I have received from many of the brothers who follow the series "Defending the Shariah." The content is: Should we participate in the presidential elections? Therefore, I ask those who have not followed the series, especially the recent episodes, not to bother themselves or me by following this word and then discussing details that have been thoroughly presented in the series.
I say to you, my brothers, with the help of Allah: In the series, I take my time with the followers because the truth is heavy on the hearts of many, and the primary goal is to correct concepts, clarify the path, and guide people to the truth, not to condemn and create enmity. However, the proposal presented in the series is clear: that democracy is a polytheistic system that grants the right of legislation to the parliament without Allah the Almighty, and the constitution stipulates this as we have explained.
The presidency in this democratic system plays its role in approving and implementing these polytheistic legislative rituals. Article 79 of the constitution obliges the president to swear by Allah the Almighty to respect the constitution and the law, and Article 25 of the constitutional declaration obliges him to respect the constitution, the sovereignty of the people, and the sovereignty of the law. Articles 108, 109, 113, 136, and 137 of the constitution show that the role of the president is to implement the legislation of the constitution and the parliament. If he wants to enact a law, he proposes it to the People's Assembly, and if the People's Assembly enacts a law and the president rejects it, it returns to the council, which can impose the law by a two-thirds majority, and the president cannot dissolve the parliament for the same reason twice.
In summary, all of this means that the president is the head of a system that makes the parliament sovereign, not Allah, the sovereignty of the people, not the Shariah, and the constitution the reference, not the religion of Allah. We have explained that even if this system results in the application of some Shariah rulings by the permission of the parliament, the mere subjection of the rulings to the vote of the parliament is considered polytheism with Allah the Almighty. The president can never transcend the parliament and say, "I will apply the Shariah because it is the religion of Allah, may those who are pleased be pleased and those who are displeased be displeased."
Electing someone to be president is electing a person to commit the crime of polytheism in legislation without Allah. The role of this president is to participate in the legislation and implementation of human rulings. Imagine if someone said to you: Go and elect one of two people to drink alcohol, would you elect? Would you elect in this case? When you go to elect a president in this democratic system, you are electing a person to commit the greatest of sins, the root of evil, and the origin of calamities, which is polytheism with Allah the Almighty in legislation and the obligation to obey.
Therefore, my brothers, I am angry at the followers of the series who ask me after all this: What is your opinion on the elections? What should we do about them? Brothers, I do not expect you to ask me after this introduction: It is true that the democratic system is a polytheistic system, and the presidency is a participation in this polytheism, and it is true that Allah the Almighty said: {And it has already been revealed to you and to those before you that if you associate anything with Allah, your work will certainly come to nothing, and you will surely be among the losers} [Al-Zumar: 65], and He said: {Indeed, Allah does not forgive that partners be associated with Him, but He forgives what is less than that to whom He wills} [An-Nisa: 48], and He said: {Indeed, whoever associates others with Allah has certainly forbidden himself Paradise, and his refuge is the Fire. And there are not for the wrongdoers any helpers} [Al-Ma'idah: 72].
But despite this, you nullify all the evidence of the Quran and the Sunnah and render their meaning void with the phrase "the jurisprudence of interest and harm." You commit the harm of polytheism with Allah to prevent the harm of the return of the remnants to power. You waste the benefit of monotheism and the exclusivity of Allah in legislation and obedience for the benefit of an Islamic person occupying this polytheistic position. Do not expect me, my brothers, to say this.
This religion of interest and harm, which nullifies all evidence and subjects the texts to human whims under seemingly religious names, and whose application is far from the way of the righteous predecessors, we reject it in whole and in part. The explanation, evidence, foundation, and detail are in the methodological series that I follow. Here, it is sufficient for me to say that there is no greater harm than participating in this democratic process.
If you grant me, brother, that democracy is polytheism, then electing a president means appointing someone to practice polytheism on your behalf. Electing a president in this democratic system means appointing someone to practice legislative polytheism on your behalf. Election is appointment; by electing a president, you appoint someone to practice the polytheism of legislation without Allah the Almighty.
The religion of interest and harm of the whimsical, based on whim, not the Shariah, has reached the point where some say: If the matter reaches the point where you have to choose between a Christian and a Jew, then choose the Christian! I ask you, brothers, what will you do, you followers of the jurisprudence of interest and harm of the whimsical? According to your basis and jurisprudence, you will mobilize the people to support alcohol and fornication as a means of committing the lesser of two evils and bearing the lesser of two harms. This is the same jurisprudence that made one of the parties support a man for the presidency, a man whom the members of the party themselves said his statements were outside the religion, as he affirmed the respect for the opinion of the people if they rejected the reference of the Shariah, that the atheist has the right to spread his literature at his own expense, that the Muslim has the right to convert to Christianity, and that if he becomes president, there will be a communist party, a secular party, and all parties in Egypt.
The jurisprudence of interest and harm has led an Islamic party to support this man to be president. Or will you say: Rather, Muslims should withdraw from this farce, the farce of choosing between alcohol, drugs, fornication, and perversion? I say to you at that time: Then the farce of electing a person to fill the highest seat in a polytheistic system is greater and more dangerous than the harm of alcohol, drugs, fornication, and perversion, so why do you not command the people to withdraw from these polytheistic elections? Is that not more appropriate?
I am innocent of this new religion, the religion of interest and harm of the whimsical, which has taught people not to respect the texts and to ignore them. This is the religion that makes man without constants. And if my rejection of it is rigidity and stiffness, then I praise Allah for it. As Imam Dhahabi said: "May Allah curse intelligence without faith, and may Allah be pleased with dullness with piety."
What is required then? It is required to abstain from this farce based on choosing a person to fill the highest seat in this polytheistic system. Someone will say: But what about Article Two of the constitution? Brother, go back to the last two episodes of the series "Defending the Sharia" to know the absurdity of Article Two. Someone will say: The Islamists will change the constitution. Alas! Alas! What change to the constitution when they have sold the goal for the means? What change to the constitution when the respected Islamic candidate, after his campaign was filled with talk of applying the Sharia and an Islamic Caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital, emphasizes his readiness to make concessions to other parties regarding the formation of the constitutional assembly, the presidency, the national unity government, the legislative agenda, and the inclusion of the Copts and liberal, secular, and Nasserist parties in that. That is, for the sake of reaching the presidency, he is willing to include Christians and secularists in writing the constitution. The constitution is the religion of the state, so look at the farce.
The powers of the president according to the constitution and the constitutional declaration are limited, and he never owns the mechanisms to apply the Sharia. And for the sake of reaching this position, he sells the constitution that he claims he wants to reform. He sells the constitution that he claims he wants to reform. Even from the purely utilitarian perspective, far from the legal foundation, it was better for them to insist on writing the constitution alone and forming the constitutional court, even if that led to the sacrifice of parliamentary seats and the presidency, because the constitution is the religion of the state that imposes, prohibits, rewards, punishes, and obliges everyone to follow it. Nevertheless, they sell the constitution for presidential and parliamentary positions governed by this constitution.
And in reality, I think that even if this Islamic faction did not include anyone in writing the constitution and entrusted it with writing the constitution completely, it would not improve its condition at all, because it has made consensus its highest goal. It has made its highest goal seeking the approval of the people, the Copts, the secularists, and the liberals, where the Islamic candidate confirms in his conference last week the consensual nature of the state and that the nation is the source of authorities and sovereignty for the people. These are the democratic concepts in their ugliest forms.
Then, it is not permissible, my brothers, in such a situation to deceive the people and confuse them with a distorted application of Islamic terms, such as saying: committing the lesser of two evils. Is there someone who forces you out of your house and forces you to vote, otherwise he will kill you? The choice is not between the Islamic candidate and the candidate of the remnants to fill this polytheistic seat, but the only choice is to abstain from this system entirely and work to abolish it and deny this evil with your heart and tongue.
Brothers, participating in democratic elections is an acknowledgment of the democratic system on which it is based, this system that gives every heretic and infidel the right to be president and rule the people if the people choose him. Apart from all the premises mentioned, the mere existence of Shafik, the warrior against God, His religion, and His Messenger, who repeatedly declares that he does not want to apply the Sharia and wants to remove the verses of the Quran from the curricula, and that we are satisfied with what the ballot boxes produce as a result that there is a god or there is no god. Do you refer to the ballot box and say that my vote will be that there is a god? Our condition is evil and more corrupt.
So the choice is not between the rule of God or the rule of humans, but the only choice for the ballot boxes is the rule of humans. And the dispute is about who will head the system of human rule. You are not allowed to accept participating in a vote on the rule of God or the rule of humans, because your participation is a submission to an issue that does not accept choice, submission to human opinions, and then it is an acknowledgment from you of the result because you have made the ballot box the judge. What about a vote whose result is predetermined: the rule is for other than God, but the dispute is over who will carry out this rule.
It is strange that the democratic Islamic parties and those who are deceived by them allow themselves to attack each other for political arguments and analyses: such and such party receives external support from other countries, controls its word, such and such group presented its candidate after agreeing not to do so, the nomination of so and so splits the votes. All this allows them to criticize, blame, deny, and doubt the intentions. But when we come with legal arguments, we are not excused, but we are asked to lower our voices and fear God in what we say in this difficult period, and that our hearts be open to disagreement in this matter that we see as polytheism. This duality is from the effect of the religion of benefit and harm. We have the texts and the divine argument, so we must be silent. But those whose merchandise is benefit and harm, analyses, and intellectual opinions, they can go around, make mistakes, and correct them. Glory be to God the Great.
So that was from the legal perspective. And it must be remembered that this word is an answer to questions that were asked of me and is not a legal foundation for the issue. Whoever wants the foundation and the presentation of evidence and the refutation of doubts should follow the series "Defending the Sharia."
As for the realistic perspective, I do not know the necessary extent of the military council's contempt and humiliation of the parliamentary Islamists until they wake up. We, for the reasons mentioned earlier, saw that no good would come from this democratic electoral process. A process based on polytheism will not be blessed by God. What about after the events of Mohamed Mahmoud Street, then the exclusion of whoever they wanted from the candidates, then what about after the events of Abbaseya, then the entry of symbols of the former regime into the farcical elections, then the acquittal of symbols of the former regime and the killers whose hands were stained with the blood of the revolutionaries. Is there any hope left for you, parliamentarians, in this process?
O parliamentary Islamists, what has happened to you? Have you not realized yet that this democratic process has only led to a loss of the people's trust in you and your call? Do you not see that you have become part of the Jahili system, working to strengthen its pillars? You defused the revolution on the pretext of bringing the country to stability, so the military laughed at you with the seats of the farcical parliament, and in return, he strengthened his pillars using you, and he became more aggressive towards you, the people, and the revolution again. Then he aborts every new attempt to revive the revolution with you and by using you.
So the events of Mohamed Mahmoud were aborted by the fact that parliamentary elections are coming and you were the ones who promoted that. And the events of Abbaseya were aborted by the fact that presidential elections are coming, and the military will use you to abort popular anger after the trial of Mubarak on the grounds that the repeat round of the presidential elections is coming. You have become consolidators of the pillars of the army and the lackeys of the former regime in exchange for participating in this polytheistic rule. Wretched is the price and wretched is what you buy. Then you boast afterwards that you ignited the revolution at its beginning. What pride is there in that if you frustrated it afterwards, so it became a burning for the poor people, a destruction of their morale, and a delay of their hopes.
Every time the military council humiliates you, dulls your senses, and kills the demonstrators, excludes whoever he wants to exclude, and acquits the criminals of the former regime, and you are still in your illusions and dreams of taming the military for yourselves, and you imagine after all this that you will reach through this farce the appointment of an obedient president who can say to the army "no." The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, said: "A believer is not stung from a hole twice," and you have been stung a thousand times. The problem is with you.
In conclusion: What should we do? What should we do? Every Muslim must withdraw from the democratic process and its councils and elections immediately, and declare it pure and clear. The presidency in Egypt is a seat of shirk (associating partners with Allah). The seat of Islam has not been established until we occupy it. We want Islam to rule, not to search for a ruler to occupy this democratic seat.
Some may say: Should we withdraw from this process and leave the country and its people to the secular remnants and Christians? Isn't this negativity? However, leave their falsehood to them, leave their involvement in their shirk-like democracy, leave them the sovereignty of parliament, leave them the positive laws, leave them the submissive subservience to the West, leave them all these falsehoods and do not compete with them in them. Do not say: "Give us seats as they have seats," as the Children of Israel said before: "Make for us a god as they have gods." [Al-A'raf: 138]. He (Allah) said: "Indeed, you are an ignorant people." [Al-A'raf: 138].
Leave their attempts to them, and in return, do not leave them the arenas of calling to Allah, the Exalted. Do not leave the call to truth, do not leave teaching people that the rule is for Allah, do not leave warning against the shirk of legislation and obedience, do not leave exposing the falsehood and stripping it, do not leave uprooting the thorns and addressing the distortion of concepts that occurred in the hearts of people due to the unregulated jurisprudence of benefit and harm and involvement in the democratic process. Do not leave reviving the loyalty and disavowal in the hearts, do not leave inciting people and provoking them to falsehood and its people, do not leave the simple people whose minds are played by the secularists and remnants, and they exhale their poisons and some Islamists themselves wear, unfortunately.
Do not leave taking the means, the means of worldly success and infiltration into the layers of society and mastering your work and drawing success stories in your fields, so that people know that your call is a positive one, instead of draining energies and wasting time in this ridiculous democratic game of candidacy and election. Preserve, O people of the pure methodology far from democracy, preserve your distinctiveness and purity until the people realize the illusory path of democracy and its bitterness, they will return to you and trust you because you have not plunged into its mire.
Then, O parliamentary Islamists, you still have some respect from the people. A million brought down the regime, so what about the ten million who elected candidates on the basis that they are Islamists? And what if they are joined by millions of voters who abstained from elections out of despair and loss of trust in the Islamists after seeing their continuous failure and cowardice? And there is still hope that these people will support those who raise the pure banner. And what if those who join them who disbelieve in the democratic process altogether and will join those who raise a pure banner? In reality, people have dignity, love for freedom, and sacrifice, but they want leaders. You have played a role of discouragement, concession, and ambiguity in the past months, so disavow what has passed and be leaders in rejecting injustice and calling for the pure Sharia of Allah, before your complete fall from the eyes of Allah and then from the eyes of the people.
It may be said: But the disturbance in the street again will lead to a tragedy. The tragedy of pain is happening anyway, and blood will be shed anyway. And the warning that I conveyed from Sayyid Qutb in the previous speech about the Abbasids, may Allah have mercy on him, said: "Rather, I have seen entire nations pity the cost of freedom once, so they remain paying the taxes of slavery many times, taxes that cannot be compared to the cost of freedom and do not reach a tenth of it. And the Jews said to their prophet: 'O Moses! We will never enter it as long as they are therein. So go you and your Lord and fight. We will sit here.'" [Al-Ma'idah: 24]. They paid the price of this retreat from the costs of honor for forty years, wandering in the desert, eaten by the sands, humiliated by exile, and scattered by fears. And they would not have paid a tenth of all this as the price of honor and victory in the world of men. There must be a price that individuals pay, that groups pay, and that nations pay. Either this price is paid for honor, dignity, and freedom, or it is paid for humiliation, disgrace, and slavery." May Allah have mercy on him.
So, will this bring an Islamic president? If this president did not come this way, if the president did not come this way, and if this revolution did nothing but prevent kufr (disbelief) from settling in the hearts of the people and not allowing it to have a say in the land of Egypt, this is the fulfillment of a great duty until Allah grants victory to the Muslims, regardless of where the relief and victory begin, whether from Egypt or elsewhere. The important thing is that the people of Egypt do not allow a new Jahili (ignorant) rule to settle on their chests after their revolution and sacrifices.
In conclusion, I remind you that this is a response called for by necessity and time, while the foundation and details are in the series I am following. So, I ask those who have comments to discuss the detailed presentation in the series, otherwise, taking and responding without referring to this detail and without having a common basis for discussion is of little fruit. Whatever is correct in what has been presented is from Allah, and whatever is incorrect is from myself and Allah is free from it. I ask Allah, the Great Lord of the Honorable Throne, to guide us and the workers for Islam to what He loves and is pleased with, and to keep us and the workers for Islam away from error, sin, and mistakes. He is the Hearer, the Responder to the supplication. Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah.