Ruling without God's Revelation
Published in October 24, 2010
Translated by: Ahmed Fathy
Firstly:
1- The political religious trends accuse the Egyptian State of ruling with laws never revealed by God; Wahabi extremists thus consider Egypt as a 'heretic' state, as they raise slogans that misuse certain verses of the Quran that contain derivations of the root (Hukm). Even in the book titled "Neglected Duty", authored by one of the culprits who participated in the assassination of president Sadat, namely, Abdul-Salam Faraj, we see how the Wahabi author incites readers to perform military jihad against the Egyptian State because it rules without God's revealed laws of sharia.
2- An Azharite ignoramus of a sheikh has written a booklet to refute the book of the terrorist Abdul-Salam Faraj, asserting that the verses about ruling with what God has revealed refer only to the People of the Book (i.e., Jews + Christians) and the Egyptian government lauded the booklet and its author and promoted him as a reward!
3- The Azharite ignoramus wrote a false view, as the Quranic verses are addressed to all its readers in all eras; besides, God is the Only Judge of People of the Book and all human beings, and we (i.e., Quran-believing people) are never to judge faiths of Jews and Christians or any other denominations, as this is God's business and not ours as mortals. When God revealed His Scriptures (e.g., the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran), He never imposed faith/belief on humans using angels, weapons, or swords; rather, He granted all human beings the freedom of choice (to believe or to disbelieve) and specified the Day of Judgment to judge all humanity as per their choices, faiths, and deeds, to reward/punish each of them. Hence, there is no room for mortals to judge one another in terms of faith, as such insolent interference is never allowed by God; God is the Sole Owner of the Day of Judgment, and no mortals are allowed to share such ownership and assume talking in the name of God. Hence, it is a grave sin to play God's role by accusing others of being 'infidels' condemned to Hell because they differ from us in terms of faith/belief or in terms of political views.
4- Away from declaring others as infidels and heretics (a hateful notion to us that we have condemned and refuted in earlier articles), we assert here that the Quranic idea of ruling without God's revelation does not refer to political rule, but court rulings of arbiters/judges like what we understand within the judicial system or authority of today. It is a historical fact that ancient forefathers and ancestors among Sunnite scholars, imams, theologians, etc., honored by Wahabi Salafists of today, never applied the notion of using God's revelation to judge and rule as per Quranic verses on any issue. Instead, they followed the dominant culture of tyranny and oppression within all caliphates (Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, etc.) and formulated man-made sharia legislations of fiqh to serve tyrants and despots to help them have quasi-religious pretexts to commit all crimes of massacring, torturing, and oppressing people in the name of God, and such man-made fiqh legislations (formed with the passage of centuries) have been deemed as God's sharia; yet, Islam and the Quran are innocent from such falsehoods inherited by every generation ever since. God's revelation is only the Quranic verses and not fiqh laws and rules. This fact has been ignored by imams and scholars for centuries.
5- Sadly, the Wahabi religious trends in Egypt who seek political power have not even the minimum amount of Quranic religious culture to use the Quran as the criterion to judge the traditions and old notions. If we do so, we will see how the Quran contains no punishment of death for non-murders, especially the weird notion of stoning adulterers/adulteresses, and no penalties for drinking wine and other sins that Salafists insist that they require corporeal punishments. God commands putting to death those who murdered anyone on purpose; see the Quranic Chapter 6 and the Quranic Chapter 17. "And do not kill the soul which God has made sacred, except in the course of justice..." (17:33) " Because of that We ordained for the Israelites: that whoever kills a person-unless it is for murder or corruption on earth-it is as if he killed the whole of humankind; and whoever saves it, it is as if he saved the whole of humankind..." (5:32). Even in self-defense fighting, no aggressions are allowed as per the Quran: "And fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not commit aggression; God does not love the aggressors." (2:190); "And fight them until there is no persecution, and worship becomes devoted to God alone. But if they cease, then let there be no fighting except against the unjust ones... Whoever commits aggression against you, retaliate against him in the same measure as he has committed against you..." (2:193-194). The Quran commands flogging and not stoning for fornication, and punishing those who terrorize and commit aggressions against people, in order to regulate how people deal with one another and live in peace by protecting rights of people. As for rights of God (i.e. acts of worship and how one performs them), no mortals have the right to interfere in them to reward or punish anyone based on them; this is God's exclusive business, not the business of mortals as per the Quranic teachings of Almighty God; otherwise, mortals (i.e., corrupt clergymen) who interfere and issue rules and laws in religion would be deifying themselves by sharing God's authority and judgment in His sharia and religion.
6- The Wahabi political trends desire that modern people in Egypt of the 20 century A.D. would return to the Middle-Ages culture and mentality, and yet, they accuse the Egyptian government of being 'heretic' despite the fact that the man-made sharia laws of fiqh contradict the Quranic sharia laws and teachings and add to it things never ordained by God in the Quran. When we refute Wahabism using the Quran, they have accused us of being a 'heretic' and an 'infidel' who distort meanings of the Quran and incited the Egyptian regime to persecute our person, and Egyptian State employees and high-rank officials think of Wahabism as if it were Islam, and this makes them linked and affiliated unwittingly to notions and ideas of the Wahabi extremist trends.
Lastly:
The Cairo-based independent newspaper Al-Ahrar published the above article on 5th of July, 1993, within a series of articles titled "The Narrator Says"; yet, until now, we scream alone in the wilderness and no one takes heed of what we preach!