Mohamed Ousman
Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that power is the sole possession of Allah:
“Say, ‘O Allah, Lord of all dominion! You grant sovereignty to whom You will, and You take away sovereignty from whom You will...’” (The Ascendant Qur’an, Surah Aal Imran, verse 72)
When Allah entrusts power to His servants and subjects, He is testing people to see whether they will do what He wants, when He wants and how He wants it done.
In the context of our transient life, Islamic power, practically, is the ability to implement holistic systems and programs to proactively socialize Allah’s Will; eradicate satanic pulses that obstruct the ability to frame public policy to Allah’s satisfaction and the benefit of humanity; encourage and, if necessary, even enforce public behavior accordingly.
An example will clear this up. If there is widespread impovertization (not poverty, which is a symptom) then power is needed to enact laws and policy—not to cut the hands of people who struggle to survive—to equitably redistribute resources. This power to redistribute resources ensures that people don’t live at the survival level. Thereafter comes deterrent laws to prevent theft and then enforce those laws if need be.
This means that the most effective expression of power is at the state level when it is exercised according to scripture and hence it becomes an expression of Allah’s Will. Power in the Islamic context can never be exercised in exclusion of Allah’s Will.
The next level of power expression is the Islamic Movement which is the conscience of the Islamic State. It comprises those selfless souls who will always keep in check abuses by the state, Islamic as it may be.
Together, these are the two complementary forces that form the backbone of the Islamic State, viz. Divine Will in the hands of powerful Divine subjects.
Once we understand this to be the backbone of the Islamic model of state, the next step requires that we know about walayat al faqih, not wilayat al faqih. Wilayah (with a kasrah on the و ) refers to something physical but walayah (with a fat’hah on the و) refers to something conceptual, intangible, beyond borders, etc.
Once we make this conceptual leap, we are ready to collapse 1400 years of schism and develop a common understanding of what our responsibilities to the Islamic state are.
The Islamic Republic in Iran stands for everything the model Islamic State in Madinah at its inception stood for:
1: Independence from the forces of kufr and shirk;
2: Reliance upon Allah; and
3: Non-reliance upon the Kafirin, Mushrikin and Dhalimin (those in rejection of Allah’s Power and Authority, those who rival His Power and Authority and those who oppress, respectively).
These three cornerstones come out of the unmistakable words of Allah.
The leaders of kufr, shirk and dhulm desire that Muslims negotiate away their worldview so that they may do the same. This Divine cautionary was taken up by the revolutionary leadership in the Islamic Republic in Iran where, as numerically few in the world, it refused to negotiate away its Islamic self-determination and opposition to global oppression.
It pays a huge price for this uncompromising principled position, reminiscent of the Prophetic words, “by Allah, O my uncle, if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left hand on condition that I leave this affair of relocating power and authority to its Divine source; I will never abandon it until I am either successful or I perish in the process.”
This was the response of Allah’s Prophet when Quraysh tried to use his uncle, Abu Talib, to tempt him with four proposals including having leadership of Arabia.
How many offers have the leaders from the worldview of kufr, shirk and dhulm brought to the leadership of the Islamic Republic in Iran over the past 45 years? Yet, the revolutionary leadership has not compromised on the three afore-mentioned fundamentals.
When the Imam was mapping an independent Islamic course and policy for the Islamic Republic in Iran, an advisor told him, “The Kafirin, Mushrikin and Dhalimin in the west will impose crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic in Iran, isolate it and cause the Muslims there to suffer, etc.” The Imam concluded by saying “our objective is not to sacrifice Islam to save our economy or country. Rather our economy, country and everything is expendable for Islam.”
This revolutionary leadership understood and continues to understand that the Kafirin, Mushrikin and Dhalimin will not come and say “here’s your Islamic State on a golden platter.” Neither should Muslims rely on them to construct Islam in real life. Muslims have to work for it and people who think in terms of profit and loss will not be cut out for that task.
The detractors of the Islamic Republic in Iran say, it is part of the structures of kufr, shirk and dhulm such as the United Nations and other forums. We take them back to the Prophet (pbuh) who was independent in his worldview yet he used and exhausted the protection within the tribal setup of Arabia until it could not be used any more.
The subtlety that these hasty detractors miss is that the Prophet (pbuh) was using the tribal system without being integrated into it, without being used by it, without relying on it and without being beholden to it. No one was dictating to the Prophet how he should operate in trying to construct his alternative Islamic model while rejecting the jahili status quo.
Another interfering issue blocking people’s ability to identify the Islamic Republic in Iran as Islamic is their misunderstanding that it is fractured and not part of the global Muslim Ummah and thus has a lot to do internally before looking externally. While it is true that not everyone in the Islamic Republic in Iran serves the Islamic course 100 per cent, that situation existed in Madinah too when not everyone served the Prophet’s Islamic State with sincerity.
Actually, these detractors who cannot see this historical development project their nationalistic thoughts and thus fail to realize that if some Muslims in the Islamic Republic in Iran fail to overcome nationalism and localization, it does not detract from the fact that the state is Islamic.
One only needs to review the policies of the Islamic Republic in Iran and its revolutionary leadership rather than the actions of individuals who may be showing signs of weakness, Persian nationalism or Shi‘i sectarianism, nowadays.
Let us appreciate that the extension of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic is Iran is trans-national as it operates in Lebanon, Palestine, and other areas. That outreach projects by the Islamic Republic in Iran, although consistent in the past, are in need of improvement.
But what has been the response of Muslims outside the Islamic Republic in Iran? Have they been up to par with their supportive Islamic duty?
A third underlying problem with un-thinking Muslims is their lack of understanding of how the Islamic State develops. Unfortunately, the Muslim mind is undeveloped in Islamic political thought so people say “but the Islamic State in Iran has this or that which contravenes the Shari‘ah”. Allah revealed the Qur’an over 23 years and not in one lump-sum and not in a vacuum.
One cannot expect a nascent state to be operating as a full-fledged one. The Madinah of the Prophet was not a full-fledged Islamic State at inception. The ayaat outlawing riba eventually were among the last to descend. The reason being that society goes through a journey of incrementally maturing which ushers in these eventualities. So, although at inception the Islamic State in Madinah had riba, the direction of the state and society was heading away from kufr, shirk and economic dhulm.
The pertinent question that these doubting Thomases should ask themselves is where are they in regards to the bay‘ah i.e. their pledge of allegiance and the ta‘ah i.e. their pledge of obedience to the Islamic leadership when they make their demands and expectations!?
Notwithstanding their vacillation, the influence of the Islamic Republic in Iran is growing despite the vehement protestations by internal and external Munafiqin. Whether the Muslims can’t or don’t want to see the influence of the Islamic State, certainly the zionists and imperialists know it and are trying to eradicate it by all means of intrigue and subterfuge.
Let us remind these delinquent detractors that the concept of the bay‘ah and the ta‘ah is Qur’anic. Had it not been for their failure to break out of their own nationalism, localization and sectarianism and respond, as ordered by Allah and His Prophet, to the outreach projects of the Islamic Republic in Iran, it could have avoided many of the apparent compromises that they criticize.
As an Ummah we cannot have multiple trajectories. Nationalism and sectarianism are violations of the single Ummah concept and the detraction is fundamentally wrong and problematic. Allah says: “Indeed, this is your Ummah [when it is] one Ummah—and as I am your Sustainer, you should conform to Me.” (The Ascendant Qur’an, Surah Al Anbiya’ verse 92).
The above being said, the Islamic Republic in Iran is not perfect. It has problems and some problematic officials, but the revolutionary leadership remains sincere. The Prophet (pbuh) says all the descendants of Adam are error prone…
Muslims should differentiate between those who are automatically and deliberately making mistakes from those who are making ijtihadi lapses and operational miscalculations from lack of experience. And where there are problems in need of fixing, it is the responsibility of the global Islamic Movement to advise and if warranted pressurize the leadership, with their helping hands, to attend to and fix the problems.
For the Prophet goes on, ... “and the best of these error-prone descendants of Adam are the ones who make amends.” The leaders of the Islamic Republic in Iran cannot ignore its well-wishers nor insist on errors and sins. That would constitute the first step towards degeneration and there would be no difference between the detractors who ignore the Islamic State, and the Islamic State that ignores the Islamic movement.
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