Shari’ah - and Jihad - on American Elections

Dr. Pasha

(Bringing Islam to the World One Concept at a Time!
Taking the Qur'an to Every Home and Heart that Needs It --
And which One Does Not?)

It Is Elections in America

It is middle of October 2012. And it is elections in America.

God bless the land in which I live and work, and in which, if that is how God wills it, I will most probably die and be buried.

Most likely, 45-50 percent of eligible American voters will not vote this election cycle. They will come up, if they do at all, with all kinds of reasons and excuses for not doing so.

Muslims Must Vote

But not if they are Muslims.

Then they don’t have a reason or an excuse valid enough, or powerful enough, for them not to vote.

That is, if they are Muslim.

For, the bottom line in Islam is this: Muslims must vote, or they will be committing one of the most grievous sins of their lives.

Some would say, they won’t even be Muslim if they don’t vote.

Voting: Most Serious Islamic Obligation

That is how serious is the obligation of voting in Islam.

Unless, of course, they are in a state of such advanced physical or mental impairment and degeneracy that prevents them from doing so.

That Is Shari’ah

For, if they are Muslim, they are required by Islamic law – call it Shari’ah if you will – to even crawl to the election booth, if they have to, to cast their vote.

Wa Lawu Habwan is how the Hadith puts it in relation to how eligible people need to get to Jum'ah Congregation.

Even If You Have to Be Carried

Or, if they have to, supported and virtually carried by two people, one on either side, with their feet dragging on the ground.

Getting to an election booth in Islam – in Shari’ah that is – is no different.

Social Responsibility: An Islamic Mandate

How can it be, when the Muslims are appointed by God to make sure that the world in which they live, and the societies and lands of which they are a part, live and work the best way they can?

This makes social responsibility a most fundamental Islamic requirement and a most inescapable Islamic mandate.

And what better way is there to discharge that responsibility, and to carry out that mandate, than to put the best people in office through free and fair elections?

It Is also What Is Called Jihad

And it is also one of the finest forms of Jihad – that greatest and most noble struggle that all human beings are required by God to wage to make good things happen and keep bad things from happening in the land in which they live – and throughout the world.

END

Dr. Syed Husain Pasha is an educator and scholar of exceptional
talent, training and experience. He can be reached at DrSyedPasha [at]
AOL [dot] com or www.IslamicSolutions.com.