One of the most important features of the people of Jahiliyyah throughout time is that for each tribe or group of people, one can find an idol that distinguished them from others.
They glorified this idol and attributed themselves to it exclusively, and by it they vied in pride with the idols of their enemies. They reached the point that the slogan of this group consisted of glorifying this idol over Allah and thus they and their idols gained power and influence among people. Either this idol is glorified among a great many groups, then the group that serves it and adheres to gains strength and influence through it, or the group is powerful, where it imposes venerating and sanctifying its idol over the rest of the groups, and this is often the case. Venerating this idol likely has political aims, where submitting to it is to submit to the group associated with it and serves its orders, claims to represent it, and has the secrets of alleged communication with it through its priests.
Therefore, we find that any nation whose kingdom falls, its king and idol fall too, so that the jahili people worship another idol, which is often the idol of the conquering or surviving nation. Perhaps the story of Abrahah al-Habashi and the Ka’bah is the best example of this. He built his church in Yemen to attract the Arabs to glorify it, thus subjecting them to his influence. When he saw them turning away from it, fulfilling their connection with the Ka’bah and its idols, he prepared an enormous army to demolish it and remove the idols that competed with his own idol, which was worshiped beside Allah. Allah sent His Messenger (saws) with the truth to prohibit people from worshiping all these idols and instead called them to worship Allah alone without partners. Glorified is Allah in His call to reject shirk! Anything worshiped besides Allah is inevitably taken as His equal, whether it is a Prophet, a beloved king, a righteous worshiper, an arrogant ruler, a deceiving priest, an obeyed law, a grave, tree, or rock from which blessings are sought, or a dreadful devil and the so forth.
As is the sunnah of Allah in the nations of the past,
the people would not remain for long if the message of Tawhid was not
sent to them, for they would return to shirk, appoint tawagheet,
worshiping them over Allah, and call people to worship them. One the
most prominent forms of mushrik polytheism is their taking whomever
they see as the best of ascetics worshipers as gods. First, they
portray those worshipers through images, taking their likenesses
to remind people of the ascetic worship of Allah, setting firmly on
their path whoever sees them. So the venerators become idols
that are worshiped beside Allah. Intercession is sought from them,
animals are presented as sacrifices to them, and so on. The
mushrikeen believe that they get closer to Allah though this, and
they reject that their rites make them partners with Allah, who said,
quoting them, “We only worship them that
they bring us closer to Allah,” [39:3]
and, “These are our intercessors with
Allah.” [10:18]
They defend their idols to a great extent and reject all who forbid their worship, as they say, “Do not abandon your gods! Do not abandon Wadd, nor Suwa’, nor Yaghuth, Ya’uq, and Nasr.” [71:23] In that, they are followed by those who grow in disbelief by following their fathers, obeying them as a religion that forbids them from worshiping Allah. Allah said about them, "When it is said to them, 'Come to what Allah has revealed and to the Messenger,' they say, 'Sufficient for us is what we found our fathers following.'" [5:104] Allah then invalidated this claim of theirs, saying, "Even though their fathers knew nothing and were not guided?" Ibnul-‘Arabi said, explaining this verse, “As for their words, ‘what we found our fathers following,’ i.e. so we take them as models in their actions, complying with what we have seen thereof; though it was unproven to them that their fathers followed guidance and were truly infallible, and they forgot that it is possible that they were wrong.” [Ahkam al-Quran]
We find today that members of many organizations, factions and parties that claim to seek establishing the Deen and implementing the Shari’ah, have followed the footsteps of their predecessors in venerating the one they believe to be of the righteous worshipers of Allah, due to his knowledge of the Shari’ah, his greatness in his Jihad, his patience through what he faced of hardship from the tawagheet, the eloquence of his speeches, the good expression in his writings, or simply for his fame among the people. They exaggerate their reverence of this person, to a point that exceeds what is permissible the Shari’ah, by raising their pictures, giving them great titles of veneration, and placing their words and judgments over those of Allah and His Messenger (saws), even though they claim that their words were based on such. They even use the term “method” for their words, actions and judgments, codifying these “methods” and teaching them to future generations of these factions as the straight into them we would find many of them to be deviant innovators, with some of them explicit in their apostasy; or they prove the correctness of their method by the number of sacrifices given by their members, the number who were killed and imprisoned, or the number of their followers and the size of the spread of their ideas, and all these matters are not a substitute for the truth.
A Muslim weighs symbols with the scale of Deen, and does not weigh his Deen on the scale of symbols. He knows the worth of symbols by the extent to which they follow the truth, and he does not look for truth in the words of symbols and their actions. He seeks to be a worshiper of Allah and not a worshiper of the party, organization, and their symbols, but a follower of the Messenger of Allah (saws) and not the method of the faction or movement. There are many symbols today and they have come to number more than the idols of the mushrikeen in Jahiliyyah, and all of the people call to their symbol just as the jahili people called to the worship of their idols. All the parties and organizations have become symbols, and their leaders and heads are symbols, and their books and methods are symbols, so to which will the Muslim go, adhere, and follow? Everyone will answer, “Those that comply with the Book and the Sunnah.” So let us then follow the Book and the Sunnah and leave the symbols.
In the last century, innumerable calls were made demanding the Ummah to renounce taqleed and to only follow the Messenger of Allah (saws). They attacked blindly following the madhahib of fiqh, strove to tear down the mushrik deification of the Shayoukh of Sufi orders, and called Muslimeen to return to the Book and the Sunnah. These calls achieved, in their various aims, great results. However, what was clear from what followed was that these calls failed to achieve continuity, and people just blindly followed something new, replacing their previous objects of following with those who once called them to renounce it. On the other hand, most of those who were associated with these calls, a short time after their inception, took for themselves people to be followed that they imitate, deify, and love with extreme passion and obedience. The matter reached the point that they began to call others to follow those whom they deified, after they had called them for decades to leave those whom they followed of scholars and leaders.
If we delve further into the matter, we find its explanation lies in human nature. Having bias to a group to which one belongs, boasting of this group and those who belong to it or lead it, and competing in this with those from other groups are matters of human nature, not avoided except by those upon whom Allah has mercy. Also, truly isolating Tawhid for Allah and purifying the heart of His rivals is one of the hardest matters for the soul. As such, Allah said, "Most of them do not believe in Allah, unless they make partners." [12:106]
These parties, factions or organizations are forced to compete with others, allies or enemies, in an attempt to get an advantage over them by any possible means, including ways that contradict the Shari’ah or violate the fundamentals of their call. They deceive themselves and their followers in order to achieve this advantage to strengthen their internal ranks or external position. One of the common methods in this competitive game is to take “symbols”, competing with each other in their pride and veneration thereof. The importance of this method for the deviant groups increases when they are accused by their rivals of lacking a certain type of member, whether scholars, shrewd and wise leaders, powerful and experienced fighters, or even people of tradecraft and industry and experts in scientific disciplines and diplomas. The value of such people rise in these organizations, as if to show people the honesty of their call, the correctness of their plan, or the power of their group, merely due to the number and size of such symbols joining it or complimenting its methods. In accordance with the goals of the group or organization, the importance is high for these symbols, those who attract the group’s targeted audience, to join their ranks or at least garner their support. In the case that a faction or a misled party lacks a “symbol” upon which to build its collapsing structure, its leaders are afflicted by an inferiority complex related to the rival factions that already have well-known symbols who people like and because of whom they stay in their organizations.
Therefore, they do their best to attract symbols to their party or to manufacture symbols by choosing individuals whose loyalty to the faction is trusted. They then make them known in the media, inflate their personalities, exaggerate their titles, and turn them into symbols upon whom the supporters’ hearts can hang. Thus, they become like pegs placed on the sides of the party, pulling a section of supporters to it, while the lone leader of the faction is like the column upon which its structure stands; and he too is promoted among the members of the party for the purpose of advancing their group. The organization is then entirely based on people and symbols, while its actual method and creed are often nothing more than those of the symbols themselves. The party or organization that claims to belong to Islam, by reaching this state of relying upon symbols, only supplements the evident misguidance into which it has slipped and to which it led people, by legislating fanaticism for men, raising them above their human position, and by pushing for people to worship them with obedience in virtue and vice. This faction is digging its own grave, as its organization – with its creed, method, policy and members – becomes bound to these symbols after it strove so hard to bind the people to them.
The danger of the symbols on the organization and its members comes from their corruption of the Islamic method of learning, ruling and following, and their repulsion of the Book and the Sunnah, so that all truth is transferred to the symbols. Thus, the members lose their deen and the organization takes on aspects of Sufism, in which the basis of Deen is the deification of their teachers and their adapting innovated ways to reach Allah.
From another aspect, the organization’s creed and method become hostage to the desires and opinions of these symbols, especially the major dead ones, to which the organization resorts for justifying all of their words and actions, fearing their own collapse and that of the entire organization after they had built their whole structure upon this crumbling cliff called symbols. As for the living symbols, their danger for these misguided organizations is greater, due to the leadership’s fear of angering those symbols lest they leave the party, taking thousands of followers with them. The symbols are thus put into central positions of power within the party and the authority of the leadership is weakened, requiring permission before making any crucial decision. History attests that one of the greatest reasons for the dissolution of human communities is symbols and their withdrawals that tear groups apart and destroy parties and organizations.
Therefore, with the tawagheet and the enemies of Islam having knowledge of these facts, it becomes easy for them to corrupt the parties and factions by controlling these symbols with either the carrot and stick approach or mere deception. The stories of the retractions in prisons are not far from us. Intelligence agencies were able to easily wipe out some factions by controlling their symbols, who were held in the former’s custody. They issued “retractions” in which they renounced fighting the tawagheet and put forth new methods for their followers, serving and pleasing the tawagheet. In the end, the entire organization or party deviates from its original creed due to the desire of its symbols to bring benefit to or to push harm away from themselves or others.
The Muslim group is based on the Lord’s method, the foundation of which is that there is no absolute obedience except to Allah alone, that absolute submission is only for the Messenger of Allah (saws), and that its victory comes with the correctness of its method and the sincerity of its individuals and leaders in their Jihad. This victory does not entail equipment, ammunition, or symbols standing behind it, but it is the product of Allah’s grace upon them. If the group’s individuals bind the group to these facts, their deen is preserved and the group is thus built on a solid foundation, where it is not harmed by those of its members who became misguided, regardless of the extent of their value, knowledge, or seniority in rank, and no action, word or opinion of any of its members is an argument against it, but they are rather held accountable to the Shari’ah upon which it stands. If the Muslim group is firm in this regard, then it will guarantee its own survival, by Allah’s permission, and none of its members will be able to climb to glory on the shoulders of the honest. There will be no place for the inactive ideologues, each one believing that his mere presence is a blessing he gives to the group and that the group and its members should follow him and his desires, wherever that might lead. If the group relies on the symbols in its ranks, then Allah will make its torment their own doing and its defeat their own fault, and Allah does not guide those who go astray.
In this world, there are many statues, each differing in construction material, quality of their sculpting, and what it is they depict. Some of them are taken by people as idols for worship. The statue does not become an idol by itself, but rather through the presence of people who worship it. This is similar to the human “symbols” taken by people, as they are just like any other people, though they might excel in certain qualities. But what makes some of them symbols, and some not, is the pulling on the hearts and eyes of people, as well as their obedience to them, following them, and considering the path and method to be correct based only on the course they take. We find in the pages of history that the mood of people in selecting symbols varies according to the circumstances in which they live and what those circumstances demand. In a time of war, the symbol is a heroic warrior who vanquishes his enemy. In a time of drought and famine, the symbol is a generous person who gives his wealth to feed the poor and needy. And in times of peace and prosperity, it is the people of knowledge, literature and development from whom symbols are taken. This is what we can generalize over those circumstances that produce special needs, which are fulfilled by those who can become symbols in the eyes of the people. Therefore, some symbols stick to a certain issue or seek to dominate under certain circumstances, as to have an advantage over others, thus preserving that symbolic quality. Others do certain acts that gain people’s admiration, that their reputation might rise and their position might excel; and if they preserve these acquired qualities, they become symbols to which hearts cling, and of which their merits are spoken by both tongues and pens.
In addition to this, most nations have a mentality of searching for a “savior”, believing that by following him, they will reach some desired outcome. This happens when a nation is in a poor condition. There comes an increase in callers who claim to hold in their hands the path to salvation, and so the people’s hearts and hopes hold onto them. Their ability to convince people of the correctness of their way and method to achieve salvation increases how much the people are bound to them, and how extreme their love is for them. Some people are led by a leader, some are reigned over by a king, while others find light of them and thus claim themselves to prophets among them or even gods over them.
Our Ummah has become no different from other nations, even following them in becoming distant from the correct path and following deviant ways. The Messenger of Allah (saws) said, “You will tread the same path as those before you, inch by inch and step by step, so much that if they entered into a lizard’s hole, you would follow them into it.” [Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim] This has become manifest, especially in recent times, in which there is little knowledge and so much ignorance, and in which people have moved away from the Book and the Sunnah and instead clung onto men. Due to the domination of the kuffaar over the Muslimeen, people took many symbols, many of them from the people of falsehood who began by calling to some truth, like sacrifice, reform, supporting the oppressed, and so forth, and thus they were followed by the ignorant, who were taken in by some outward display of devotion, knowledge, worship, or calling to some truth, though they would eventually lead their followers astray. The examples in history are too numerous to count. Among those symbols was he who cunningly hid his evil, concealing from the people the truth of his doctrine and only showing them what attracted them of customs and acts of worship, until they guaranteed their love and submission to him. He then revealed his false doctrine and called them to it and to work upon its path, but only after they believed his words and gave him full authority over their minds and souls. Some of them became lost only after the people were found going to extremes in loving the symbol’s personality and raising him over themselves. The symbol thus exceeded his limits and became fully tyrannical, demanding his followers to perform more rituals for his veneration, justifying to them all of his misguidance and vices using what his devil would inspire unto him. There are those who were tricked by Iblis to believe that people should not turn to the Book and the Sunnah, but that they must instead adhere to the symbol’s personality in order that he lead them to the love of Allah and His obedience.
There are some who made this the basis for reaching Allah’s approval, having convinced the fools of their followers that their hearts cannot bear the great love of Allah, and thus they must follow him to only gradually rise to the love of Allah, as the mushrikeen of Sufi orders do today. The symbols we see today, and onto whom the people’s eyes and hearts cling, have most often emerged in the aforementioned ways. It is either that their deeds or qualities are what people desire or need, or they seek in them salvation from a wretched reality they wish to change; that, or they think that following them is a way to reach Allah and His approval.
In light of the wretched reality in which the Muslimeen have lived for centuries, many emerged to claim to achieve reform in the people’s worldly life, calling them to follow their path or religious way. This phenomenon became clearer in the era of Sykes-Picot and their little states, where the parties, factions and organizations attributed to Islam started to appear. Each of them brought their symbols, all of which claiming that they and their party were the ones who will lead the Ummah to salvation from this painful reality, and that they will restore the Khilafah, apply the Shari’ah, establish justice and remove injustice, and return the Ummah to the time in which the Khalifah would say to the clouds, “Rain wherever you wish, for what you produce will return to me,” and if any of the kings of the earth transgressed, then he would deploy to him an unlimited arm. So the people hold to these symbols like a drowning man holds to a rope to survive. Each of these symbols draws up a new method for people to achieve their dreams or, to be more precise, offers his followers a special type of drug that makes them not only ignorant to reality, but also ignorant to the extent their methods correspond to the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Prophet (saws).
In fact, there were dozens of methods, and at the end of each of them was a demon calling to the Fire. We thus found the followers of these parties and factions adopting strange, new deviations in order to justify the actions of their symbols, knowing with certainty that no one in their party dares to criticize their symbols anyway. Thus, the acts and words, no matter how misguided, are deemed legitimate in their religion as long as the symbols had done them, accepted them, or merely sat silent about it; and thus they became gods to be worshiped other than Allah, making permissible to them that which the religion had not.
Today, we see that the misguided followers of these factions put their fingers in their ears, hide beneath their clothes, and not only refuse to listen to those who are calling to the truth when they merely speak against their symbols, but even increase their fanaticism for these symbols in proportion to the intensity of the attack to reveal the truth. They thus resemble the mushrikeen who fought the Messengers when they showed them the truth of the idols they worshiped, as Allah described some of them who said, “You will not abandon your gods, nor will you abandon Wadd, nor Suwa’, nor Yaghuth, Ya’uq, or Nasr,” [71:23] and, “Move along and remain constant to your gods! Verily, this is something intended (against you)!” [38:6]
Therefore, we must measure each of these symbols according to the Shari’ah standard. So as for the righteous of them, whom the people went to extremes in loving after they passed away, then we uphold his truth and only seek destroy the path his followers took in his extreme veneration and in following him instead of the command of Allah and His Messenger. As for he who was misguided himself or thereby an apostate, then we explain to the people his ruling and that of his way and method, so that those who perish will perish upon evidence and those who thrive will thrive upon evidence. We cannot call people to Tawhid while leaving those who corrupt the people, misleading them from obeying Allah to obeying themselves, and from following the Messenger of Allah (saws) to following their corrupted, misguided paths and methods. The battle we must wage is one, so we call to Tawhid, to oneness, and hold the axe of Ibrahim (as) to smash the symbols that people worship instead of Allah and to remove this “symbolism” from those who are worshiped and followed, to revert them back to what they are: humans of flesh and bone who eat and drink, marry, wish and desire, hope and fear, are guided and lost, and have no right to be followed or obeyed, except as permitted by Allah.
The battle of smashing the symbols and bringing people back to the Book and the Sunnah is the longest and toughest battle, but yet remains one of the most important battles that we must wage and win, and to Allah belongs the end of all affairs.
They defend their idols to a great extent and reject all who forbid their worship, as they say, “Do not abandon your gods! Do not abandon Wadd, nor Suwa’, nor Yaghuth, Ya’uq, and Nasr.” [71:23] In that, they are followed by those who grow in disbelief by following their fathers, obeying them as a religion that forbids them from worshiping Allah. Allah said about them, "When it is said to them, 'Come to what Allah has revealed and to the Messenger,' they say, 'Sufficient for us is what we found our fathers following.'" [5:104] Allah then invalidated this claim of theirs, saying, "Even though their fathers knew nothing and were not guided?" Ibnul-‘Arabi said, explaining this verse, “As for their words, ‘what we found our fathers following,’ i.e. so we take them as models in their actions, complying with what we have seen thereof; though it was unproven to them that their fathers followed guidance and were truly infallible, and they forgot that it is possible that they were wrong.” [Ahkam al-Quran]
We find today that members of many organizations, factions and parties that claim to seek establishing the Deen and implementing the Shari’ah, have followed the footsteps of their predecessors in venerating the one they believe to be of the righteous worshipers of Allah, due to his knowledge of the Shari’ah, his greatness in his Jihad, his patience through what he faced of hardship from the tawagheet, the eloquence of his speeches, the good expression in his writings, or simply for his fame among the people. They exaggerate their reverence of this person, to a point that exceeds what is permissible the Shari’ah, by raising their pictures, giving them great titles of veneration, and placing their words and judgments over those of Allah and His Messenger (saws), even though they claim that their words were based on such. They even use the term “method” for their words, actions and judgments, codifying these “methods” and teaching them to future generations of these factions as the straight into them we would find many of them to be deviant innovators, with some of them explicit in their apostasy; or they prove the correctness of their method by the number of sacrifices given by their members, the number who were killed and imprisoned, or the number of their followers and the size of the spread of their ideas, and all these matters are not a substitute for the truth.
A Muslim weighs symbols with the scale of Deen, and does not weigh his Deen on the scale of symbols. He knows the worth of symbols by the extent to which they follow the truth, and he does not look for truth in the words of symbols and their actions. He seeks to be a worshiper of Allah and not a worshiper of the party, organization, and their symbols, but a follower of the Messenger of Allah (saws) and not the method of the faction or movement. There are many symbols today and they have come to number more than the idols of the mushrikeen in Jahiliyyah, and all of the people call to their symbol just as the jahili people called to the worship of their idols. All the parties and organizations have become symbols, and their leaders and heads are symbols, and their books and methods are symbols, so to which will the Muslim go, adhere, and follow? Everyone will answer, “Those that comply with the Book and the Sunnah.” So let us then follow the Book and the Sunnah and leave the symbols.
In the last century, innumerable calls were made demanding the Ummah to renounce taqleed and to only follow the Messenger of Allah (saws). They attacked blindly following the madhahib of fiqh, strove to tear down the mushrik deification of the Shayoukh of Sufi orders, and called Muslimeen to return to the Book and the Sunnah. These calls achieved, in their various aims, great results. However, what was clear from what followed was that these calls failed to achieve continuity, and people just blindly followed something new, replacing their previous objects of following with those who once called them to renounce it. On the other hand, most of those who were associated with these calls, a short time after their inception, took for themselves people to be followed that they imitate, deify, and love with extreme passion and obedience. The matter reached the point that they began to call others to follow those whom they deified, after they had called them for decades to leave those whom they followed of scholars and leaders.
If we delve further into the matter, we find its explanation lies in human nature. Having bias to a group to which one belongs, boasting of this group and those who belong to it or lead it, and competing in this with those from other groups are matters of human nature, not avoided except by those upon whom Allah has mercy. Also, truly isolating Tawhid for Allah and purifying the heart of His rivals is one of the hardest matters for the soul. As such, Allah said, "Most of them do not believe in Allah, unless they make partners." [12:106]
These parties, factions or organizations are forced to compete with others, allies or enemies, in an attempt to get an advantage over them by any possible means, including ways that contradict the Shari’ah or violate the fundamentals of their call. They deceive themselves and their followers in order to achieve this advantage to strengthen their internal ranks or external position. One of the common methods in this competitive game is to take “symbols”, competing with each other in their pride and veneration thereof. The importance of this method for the deviant groups increases when they are accused by their rivals of lacking a certain type of member, whether scholars, shrewd and wise leaders, powerful and experienced fighters, or even people of tradecraft and industry and experts in scientific disciplines and diplomas. The value of such people rise in these organizations, as if to show people the honesty of their call, the correctness of their plan, or the power of their group, merely due to the number and size of such symbols joining it or complimenting its methods. In accordance with the goals of the group or organization, the importance is high for these symbols, those who attract the group’s targeted audience, to join their ranks or at least garner their support. In the case that a faction or a misled party lacks a “symbol” upon which to build its collapsing structure, its leaders are afflicted by an inferiority complex related to the rival factions that already have well-known symbols who people like and because of whom they stay in their organizations.
Therefore, they do their best to attract symbols to their party or to manufacture symbols by choosing individuals whose loyalty to the faction is trusted. They then make them known in the media, inflate their personalities, exaggerate their titles, and turn them into symbols upon whom the supporters’ hearts can hang. Thus, they become like pegs placed on the sides of the party, pulling a section of supporters to it, while the lone leader of the faction is like the column upon which its structure stands; and he too is promoted among the members of the party for the purpose of advancing their group. The organization is then entirely based on people and symbols, while its actual method and creed are often nothing more than those of the symbols themselves. The party or organization that claims to belong to Islam, by reaching this state of relying upon symbols, only supplements the evident misguidance into which it has slipped and to which it led people, by legislating fanaticism for men, raising them above their human position, and by pushing for people to worship them with obedience in virtue and vice. This faction is digging its own grave, as its organization – with its creed, method, policy and members – becomes bound to these symbols after it strove so hard to bind the people to them.
The danger of the symbols on the organization and its members comes from their corruption of the Islamic method of learning, ruling and following, and their repulsion of the Book and the Sunnah, so that all truth is transferred to the symbols. Thus, the members lose their deen and the organization takes on aspects of Sufism, in which the basis of Deen is the deification of their teachers and their adapting innovated ways to reach Allah.
From another aspect, the organization’s creed and method become hostage to the desires and opinions of these symbols, especially the major dead ones, to which the organization resorts for justifying all of their words and actions, fearing their own collapse and that of the entire organization after they had built their whole structure upon this crumbling cliff called symbols. As for the living symbols, their danger for these misguided organizations is greater, due to the leadership’s fear of angering those symbols lest they leave the party, taking thousands of followers with them. The symbols are thus put into central positions of power within the party and the authority of the leadership is weakened, requiring permission before making any crucial decision. History attests that one of the greatest reasons for the dissolution of human communities is symbols and their withdrawals that tear groups apart and destroy parties and organizations.
Therefore, with the tawagheet and the enemies of Islam having knowledge of these facts, it becomes easy for them to corrupt the parties and factions by controlling these symbols with either the carrot and stick approach or mere deception. The stories of the retractions in prisons are not far from us. Intelligence agencies were able to easily wipe out some factions by controlling their symbols, who were held in the former’s custody. They issued “retractions” in which they renounced fighting the tawagheet and put forth new methods for their followers, serving and pleasing the tawagheet. In the end, the entire organization or party deviates from its original creed due to the desire of its symbols to bring benefit to or to push harm away from themselves or others.
The Muslim group is based on the Lord’s method, the foundation of which is that there is no absolute obedience except to Allah alone, that absolute submission is only for the Messenger of Allah (saws), and that its victory comes with the correctness of its method and the sincerity of its individuals and leaders in their Jihad. This victory does not entail equipment, ammunition, or symbols standing behind it, but it is the product of Allah’s grace upon them. If the group’s individuals bind the group to these facts, their deen is preserved and the group is thus built on a solid foundation, where it is not harmed by those of its members who became misguided, regardless of the extent of their value, knowledge, or seniority in rank, and no action, word or opinion of any of its members is an argument against it, but they are rather held accountable to the Shari’ah upon which it stands. If the Muslim group is firm in this regard, then it will guarantee its own survival, by Allah’s permission, and none of its members will be able to climb to glory on the shoulders of the honest. There will be no place for the inactive ideologues, each one believing that his mere presence is a blessing he gives to the group and that the group and its members should follow him and his desires, wherever that might lead. If the group relies on the symbols in its ranks, then Allah will make its torment their own doing and its defeat their own fault, and Allah does not guide those who go astray.
In this world, there are many statues, each differing in construction material, quality of their sculpting, and what it is they depict. Some of them are taken by people as idols for worship. The statue does not become an idol by itself, but rather through the presence of people who worship it. This is similar to the human “symbols” taken by people, as they are just like any other people, though they might excel in certain qualities. But what makes some of them symbols, and some not, is the pulling on the hearts and eyes of people, as well as their obedience to them, following them, and considering the path and method to be correct based only on the course they take. We find in the pages of history that the mood of people in selecting symbols varies according to the circumstances in which they live and what those circumstances demand. In a time of war, the symbol is a heroic warrior who vanquishes his enemy. In a time of drought and famine, the symbol is a generous person who gives his wealth to feed the poor and needy. And in times of peace and prosperity, it is the people of knowledge, literature and development from whom symbols are taken. This is what we can generalize over those circumstances that produce special needs, which are fulfilled by those who can become symbols in the eyes of the people. Therefore, some symbols stick to a certain issue or seek to dominate under certain circumstances, as to have an advantage over others, thus preserving that symbolic quality. Others do certain acts that gain people’s admiration, that their reputation might rise and their position might excel; and if they preserve these acquired qualities, they become symbols to which hearts cling, and of which their merits are spoken by both tongues and pens.
In addition to this, most nations have a mentality of searching for a “savior”, believing that by following him, they will reach some desired outcome. This happens when a nation is in a poor condition. There comes an increase in callers who claim to hold in their hands the path to salvation, and so the people’s hearts and hopes hold onto them. Their ability to convince people of the correctness of their way and method to achieve salvation increases how much the people are bound to them, and how extreme their love is for them. Some people are led by a leader, some are reigned over by a king, while others find light of them and thus claim themselves to prophets among them or even gods over them.
Our Ummah has become no different from other nations, even following them in becoming distant from the correct path and following deviant ways. The Messenger of Allah (saws) said, “You will tread the same path as those before you, inch by inch and step by step, so much that if they entered into a lizard’s hole, you would follow them into it.” [Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim] This has become manifest, especially in recent times, in which there is little knowledge and so much ignorance, and in which people have moved away from the Book and the Sunnah and instead clung onto men. Due to the domination of the kuffaar over the Muslimeen, people took many symbols, many of them from the people of falsehood who began by calling to some truth, like sacrifice, reform, supporting the oppressed, and so forth, and thus they were followed by the ignorant, who were taken in by some outward display of devotion, knowledge, worship, or calling to some truth, though they would eventually lead their followers astray. The examples in history are too numerous to count. Among those symbols was he who cunningly hid his evil, concealing from the people the truth of his doctrine and only showing them what attracted them of customs and acts of worship, until they guaranteed their love and submission to him. He then revealed his false doctrine and called them to it and to work upon its path, but only after they believed his words and gave him full authority over their minds and souls. Some of them became lost only after the people were found going to extremes in loving the symbol’s personality and raising him over themselves. The symbol thus exceeded his limits and became fully tyrannical, demanding his followers to perform more rituals for his veneration, justifying to them all of his misguidance and vices using what his devil would inspire unto him. There are those who were tricked by Iblis to believe that people should not turn to the Book and the Sunnah, but that they must instead adhere to the symbol’s personality in order that he lead them to the love of Allah and His obedience.
There are some who made this the basis for reaching Allah’s approval, having convinced the fools of their followers that their hearts cannot bear the great love of Allah, and thus they must follow him to only gradually rise to the love of Allah, as the mushrikeen of Sufi orders do today. The symbols we see today, and onto whom the people’s eyes and hearts cling, have most often emerged in the aforementioned ways. It is either that their deeds or qualities are what people desire or need, or they seek in them salvation from a wretched reality they wish to change; that, or they think that following them is a way to reach Allah and His approval.
In light of the wretched reality in which the Muslimeen have lived for centuries, many emerged to claim to achieve reform in the people’s worldly life, calling them to follow their path or religious way. This phenomenon became clearer in the era of Sykes-Picot and their little states, where the parties, factions and organizations attributed to Islam started to appear. Each of them brought their symbols, all of which claiming that they and their party were the ones who will lead the Ummah to salvation from this painful reality, and that they will restore the Khilafah, apply the Shari’ah, establish justice and remove injustice, and return the Ummah to the time in which the Khalifah would say to the clouds, “Rain wherever you wish, for what you produce will return to me,” and if any of the kings of the earth transgressed, then he would deploy to him an unlimited arm. So the people hold to these symbols like a drowning man holds to a rope to survive. Each of these symbols draws up a new method for people to achieve their dreams or, to be more precise, offers his followers a special type of drug that makes them not only ignorant to reality, but also ignorant to the extent their methods correspond to the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Prophet (saws).
In fact, there were dozens of methods, and at the end of each of them was a demon calling to the Fire. We thus found the followers of these parties and factions adopting strange, new deviations in order to justify the actions of their symbols, knowing with certainty that no one in their party dares to criticize their symbols anyway. Thus, the acts and words, no matter how misguided, are deemed legitimate in their religion as long as the symbols had done them, accepted them, or merely sat silent about it; and thus they became gods to be worshiped other than Allah, making permissible to them that which the religion had not.
Today, we see that the misguided followers of these factions put their fingers in their ears, hide beneath their clothes, and not only refuse to listen to those who are calling to the truth when they merely speak against their symbols, but even increase their fanaticism for these symbols in proportion to the intensity of the attack to reveal the truth. They thus resemble the mushrikeen who fought the Messengers when they showed them the truth of the idols they worshiped, as Allah described some of them who said, “You will not abandon your gods, nor will you abandon Wadd, nor Suwa’, nor Yaghuth, Ya’uq, or Nasr,” [71:23] and, “Move along and remain constant to your gods! Verily, this is something intended (against you)!” [38:6]
Therefore, we must measure each of these symbols according to the Shari’ah standard. So as for the righteous of them, whom the people went to extremes in loving after they passed away, then we uphold his truth and only seek destroy the path his followers took in his extreme veneration and in following him instead of the command of Allah and His Messenger. As for he who was misguided himself or thereby an apostate, then we explain to the people his ruling and that of his way and method, so that those who perish will perish upon evidence and those who thrive will thrive upon evidence. We cannot call people to Tawhid while leaving those who corrupt the people, misleading them from obeying Allah to obeying themselves, and from following the Messenger of Allah (saws) to following their corrupted, misguided paths and methods. The battle we must wage is one, so we call to Tawhid, to oneness, and hold the axe of Ibrahim (as) to smash the symbols that people worship instead of Allah and to remove this “symbolism” from those who are worshiped and followed, to revert them back to what they are: humans of flesh and bone who eat and drink, marry, wish and desire, hope and fear, are guided and lost, and have no right to be followed or obeyed, except as permitted by Allah.
The battle of smashing the symbols and bringing people back to the Book and the Sunnah is the longest and toughest battle, but yet remains one of the most important battles that we must wage and win, and to Allah belongs the end of all affairs.
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