Reality of openly displaying your Deen

By Shaykh ‘Abdul-‘Aziz al-Jarbu’

Many people believe that what is meant by “openly displaying one’s Deen” (amongst the disbelievers) is simply that one prays, fasts and reads the Qur’an in the lands of disbelief or the lands that are at war with the Muslims, and nobody opposes you or harms you. So, if you do this, then you have fully and openly displayed your Deen amongst them (and fulfilled your responsibilities). And this is a terrible mistake, and a profound miscalculation that must be cleared, since Allah says:
Indeed there has been an excellent example for you in Ibrahim and those with him, when they said to their people: ‘Verily, we are free from you and whatever you worship besides Allah, we have rejected you, and there has emerged between us and you, hostility and hatred for ever, until you believe in Allah Alone,’ except the saying of Ibrahim to his father: ‘Verily, I will ask for forgiveness (from Allah) for you, but I have no power to do anything for you before Allah .’ Our Lord! In You (Alone) we put our trust, and to You (Alone) we turn in repentance, and to You (Alone) is (our) final Return."

Therefore, the open display of one’s Deen is done by announcing one’s disbelief in these organizations, and clarifying this hostility to them, and to inform these disbelievers and apostates that we have disbelieved in them and that our enmity is for them, and that if we were to gain the upperhand, we would not leave them on the face (of the Earth), as ‘Umar (ra) said when he was asked by the Messenger of Allah (saws) : “What do you think, O son of Khattab (regarding the prisoners of Badr)?” So he replied: “I said: ‘By Allah, I do not agree with Abu Bakr (ra), but I think that you should give me a relative of ‘Umar so that I may strike his neck, and give ‘Aqil to ‘Ali, so that he may strike his neck, and give Hamzah his brother so that he may strike his neck- so that Allah would know that there is no space of any depth in our hearts for the disbeleivers. Those are their nobles and leaders and commanders.’ So, the Messenger of Allah (saws) leaned towards what Abu Bakr had said, but not towards what I had said. So, he took the ransom from them. The next day, I went to the Prophet (saws) and Abu Bakr (ra) and found them both crying, so I said: “O Messenger of Allah, tell me, what has made you and your companion weep? If there is a reason to weep, I will weep with you, and if there is no reason, I will pretend to weep in sympathy with you because you are weeping.” So the Prophet (saws) said: “I am weeping because I was shown the torture to which they were subjected. It was brought as close to me as this tree.” Then, Allah revealed:
"It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war (and free them with ransom) until he had made a great slaughter (among his enemies) in the land…" until the verse "…so eat of the permissible and good things that you have obtained as war booty…" 

So, he made the war booty permissible for them. So, when it was the day of the Battle of Uhud the following year, they were punished because of ransom that they had accepted on the day of Badr. So seventy of them were killed, and the Companions of the Prophet (saws) fled from him, and his tooth was broken and the egg was cracked over his head, and blood smeared his face, so Allah revealed:
"(What is the matter with you?) When a single disaster smites you, although you smote (your enemies) with one twice as great, you say: “From where does this come to us?” Say (to them), “It is from yourselves (because of your evil deeds).” And Allah has power over all things." … because of their taking of the ransom. And this was narrated by Muslim (1763) and Abu Dawud (2690) and at-Tirmidhi.

And from the most beautiful explanation of the meaning mentioned before is what At-Tabari has written in his Tafsir, where he said: “In this verse: "Indeed there has been an excellent example for you in Ibrahim and those with him, when they said to their people: ‘Verily, we are free from you and whatever you worship besides Allah, we have rejected you, and there has emerged between us and you, hostility and hatred for ever, until you believe in Allah Alone,’ except the saying of Ibrahim to his father: ‘Verily, I will ask for forgiveness (from Allah) for you, but I have no power to do anything for you before Allah .’ Our Lord! In You (Alone) we put our trust, and to You (Alone) we turn in repentance, and to You (Alone) is (our) final Return." …the Exalted says to the believers in Him from the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (saws) that there was for you – O Believers – a great example, a great model in Ibrahim the Khalil (intimate friend) of the Most Merciful for you to follow and imitate, as well as those who are with him from the Prophets of Allah.

Ibn Zayd said regarding the saying of Allah: "Indeed there has been an excellent example for you in Ibrahim and those with him…" that those who were with him are the Prophets, and His saying "… when they said to their people: ‘Verily, we are free from you and whatever you worship besides Allah…" is regarding when they said to their people who had disbelieved in Allah and worshipped the Taghout: ‘O people! We are free from you and from those whom you worship besides Allah of deities and objects of worship!’ And regarding His saying "… we have rejected you, and there has emerged between us and you, hostility and hatred for ever, until you believe in Allah Alone…", He says, informing of the saying of His Prophets to their disbelieving peoples that, ‘We have disbelieved in you, and we reject what you are upon of disbelief in Allah and we have denied your worship and what you worship besides Allah to be true, and there has emerged between us and you enmity and hatred forever because of your disbelief in Allah and your worship of others besides Him, and there will be no peace or kindness between us until you believe in Allah Alone, and until you accept Allah alone and single Him out for worship.’ And His saying: "…except the saying of Ibrahim to his father: ‘Verily, I will ask for forgiveness (from Allah) for you, but I have no power to do anything for you before Allah‘…" means that there was a great example for you in Ibrahim and those who are with him in these affairs that We have mentioned – of displaying to the disbelievers their hostility towards them and forsaking any alliance with them – except in the case of the saying of Ibrahim to his father that ‘I will seek forgiveness for you,’ for there is no example for you in this (do not imitate him in this).

And Ibn Kathir said: “Allah says to His believing slaves – whom He has ordered to be harsh against the disbelievers and to have enmity towards them and to avoid them and to disassociate themselves from them – that there was a great example for you in Ibrahim and those with him – his followers who believed with him – when they said to their people: ‘We are free from you,’ meaning: we have disassociated ourselves from you and what you worship besides Allah; ‘and we have disbelieved in you,’ meaning: in your religion and your ways; ‘and there has emerged between us and you enmity and hatred forever,’ meaning: enmity and hatred has been legislated from now between us, and as long as you remain upon your disbelief, then we will disassociate ourselves from you and hate you until you believe in Allah alone – single Him out to worship Him without any partners, and to abandon what you worship along with Him of idols and objects of worship.”

And in ‘Ad-Durar As-Saniyyah,’ the two sons of Shaykh Muhammad Ibn ‘Abdil-Wahhab said: “…and the ‘openly displaying of one’s Deen’ is to declare them (the disbelievers) to be disbelievers (Takfeer) and to point out the faults of their religion, and to insult them, and to disassociate from them, and to protect oneself from becoming close to them and leaning towards them, and to avoid them. Simply performing the prayers is not considered displaying of one’s Deen, and the saying of one that ‘We avoid them when we are in prayer and we do not eat their slaughtered meats’ is good, but it is not enough on its own to fulfill the open display of the Deen. Rather, there is no option but what has been mentioned above.”

And Shaykh Hamad ibn ‘Atiq said: “And what is intended (by display of the Deen) is the clear demonstration by continuous hostility and hatred towards the one who does not single out His Lord, so whoever fulfills this with knowledge and action, and clearly demonstrates this until the people of his land are aware of this from him, then emigration (Hijrah) is not an obligation upon him from whatever land he is in. And as for the one who is not like this – rather, he assumes that if he is left to pray and fast and perform pilgrimage, then he is no longer obligated to migrate – then this  is ignorance of the Deen, and heedlessness of the essence of the message of the Messengers. For the lands, if the judgment in them is for the people of falsehood, the worshippers of graves, the consumers of alcohol and the gamblers, then they are not satisfied except with the rituals of shirk and the judgments of the Tawagheet. And every place where this is the case, then there is no doubt for the one who has the slightest familiarity of the Book and Sunnah that its people are upon other than what the Messenger of Allah (saws) was upon.” [Ad-Durar As-Saniyyah (5/413-418)]

And there remains an issue that has not been clarified to me up until now, and it is: is it enough in the issue of displaying enmity for the Kaafir, to simply know this from you, because of the saying of Allah:
"They said “We heard a young man talking against them, (he is one) who is called Ibrahim." … even if you do not speak in their presence, or the presence of those who will relay the message to them? Or, is it a must to announce this in a loud voice that is heard everywhere, since the one who reflects upon the texts of the Sunnah will find both. But, there is agreement that for the one whose disassociation from the disbelievers or apostates and their religion is not known by his enemies nor by the believers, it becomes absolutely obligatory upon him to openly display this in any way that would get the message across in the clearest and most well-understood manner; otherwise, Hijrah becomes obligatory (Fard) upon him in accordance with his capability, and he sins by not doing so.