The Series "Caliphate and Imamate in Islamic Thought"
By the Writer and Thinker Thaer Salama - Abu Malek
Part Forty-Seven: Is the establishment of the Caliphate a definitive obligation? Is the appointment of a Caliph a definitive obligation?
Is the impermissibility of the earth being devoid of a Caliph who establishes the rulings of Islam definitive?
As we mentioned before, we will - with God Almighty's help - study and extrapolate the verses, hadiths, evidence, indicators, and clues that are related to the Caliphate, to conclude from them the existence of moral consensus (tawatur ma'nawi) on the obligation of the Caliphate, which leads to certainty.
We will use prayer as a clarifying example of how to prove the moral consensus of its obligation, and then apply the same thing to the Caliphate, with God Almighty's help.
Know, may God have mercy on you, that in addition to establishing the obligation of actions (such as prayer, for example) with commands and evidence, we found that the Lawgiver has surrounded those actions that He wanted to show their obligation with evidence that also shows the extent of their importance, or to prove that that obligation is definitive and there is no room for disagreement about it. And we found that some of these actions have reached the level of moral consensus from the totality of these pieces of evidence and clues that surrounded them. The existence of moral consensus is deduced from those pieces of evidence and clues by way of implication in its various forms of requirement, warning, and allusion, and the like, and some of them by way of inclusion, which makes the totality of the evidence indicate moral consensus. That is, of course, in addition to deriving the obligation of prayer directly from the command to establish it and the clues that surrounded it. So, our deriving the consensus does not mean that it is the only evidence of the obligation, but rather we use it as a guide to indicate the definitive nature of the obligation as well, and the degree of its importance. One of these is His command, may He be glorified and exalted, to establish prayer: ﴿AND ESTABLISH PRAYER﴾,
And one of these is the question of the disbelievers to each other in Saqar: ﴿“WHAT HAS BROUGHT YOU INTO HELL?” THEY WILL SAY, “WE WERE NOT OF THOSE WHO PRAYED﴾, so the Lawgiver considered abandoning it as a reason for entering Hell, so we deduced that that command was in the manner of obligation, that is, necessity. And He said: ﴿So woe to those who pray - [But] who are heedless of their prayer﴾ [Al-Ma'un: 4-5], so He warned against merely being heedless of prayer, and His saying ﷺ "The covenant that is between us and them is prayer, so whoever abandons it has disbelieved." Narrated by Al-Nasa'i, Book of Prayer. And Ibn Majah, so He considered establishing it a dividing line, and abandoning it a crime that is similar to the crime of disbelief, ﴿Indeed, those who believe and do righteous deeds and establish prayer and give zakah will have their reward with their Lord, and there will be no fear concerning them, nor will they grieve﴾ [Al-Baqarah: 277], ﴿The mosques of Allah are only to be maintained by those who believe in Allah and the Last Day and establish prayer and give zakah and do not fear except Allah, for it is expected that those will be of the [rightly] guided﴾ [At-Tawbah: 18], so He added it and juxtaposed it with faith and righteous deeds, and singled it out and zakah from the totality of righteous deeds for its importance,
Imam Ahmad, may God be pleased with him, and Al-Tirmidhi narrated, and the wording is his: Ibn Abi Umar narrated to us, Abdullah bin Muadh Al-San'ani narrated to us from Ma'mar from Asim bin Abi Al-Nujud from Abi Wael from Muadh bin Jabal, who said: "I was with the Prophet on a journey, and I became close to him one day while we were walking, so I said: O Messenger of God, tell me about an action that will admit me to Paradise and keep me away from the Fire. He said: "You have asked me about something great, and it is easy for whomever God makes it easy for him: You worship God and do not associate anything with Him, and you establish prayer, and you give zakah, and you fast Ramadan, and you perform Hajj to the House." Then he said: "Shall I not guide you to the doors of goodness: Fasting is a shield, and charity extinguishes sin as water extinguishes fire, and a man's prayer in the depths of the night." He said: Then he recited ﴿Their sides part [in prayer] from [their] beds; they supplicate their Lord﴾ until he reached ﴿they are doing﴾. Then he said: "Shall I not tell you about the head of the whole matter, its pillar, and the peak of its hump?" I said: "Yes, O Messenger of God." He said: "The head of the matter is Islam, its pillar is prayer, and the peak of its hump is jihad." Then he said: "Shall I not tell you about what controls all of that?" I said: "Yes, O Messenger of God." He said: He took hold of his tongue and said: "Restrain this from yourself." So I said: "O Prophet of God, will we be held accountable for what we say with it?" He said: "May your mother lose you, O Muadh, and what else throws people into the Fire on their faces, or on their nostrils, except the harvests of their tongues?" Abu Isa said: This is a good, authentic hadith.
Thus, you find that Islam has surrounded prayer with evidence that shows its great importance in Islam, so we find that its obligation is one of the greatest and most important obligations in Islam, and from this evidence we found that its obligation is morally consensual, that is, a definitive obligation, so there is no dispute in its proof. So let us apply the same process to the Caliphate to prove its moral consensus1:
1- Review the chapter: Legislation is the right of God alone, and its relationship to the obligation of the Caliphate, the concept of sovereignty, and the three joints mentioned in it, and the proof of moral consensus has been derived and explained by the combination of evidence and clues from them!
