The series "Caliphate and Imamate in Islamic Thought"
By the writer and thinker Thaer Salama - Abu Malik
The Sixty-Sixth Episode: Guarantees for Achieving the Legal State Between the Islamic and Western Perceptions - Part2
The twenty-fifth issue of Al-Waie magazine stated:
Sovereignty according to the West: It is the possession of will and the possession of implementation. If the will is taken away and its direction is in the hands of others, the one who is deprived of will becomes a slave. If he directs his will by himself, he is a master.
As for authority according to them, it is: the practice of governance and judgment. The difference between sovereignty and authority is that sovereignty includes will and implementation, meaning it includes directing the will, and includes implementation, while authority is only concerned with implementation and does not include the will.
As for the difference between the concept of authority and sovereignty according to the West, and its concept according to Muslims, the West reached the two theories of sovereignty of the nation, and the nation is the source of powers after a bloody conflict that swept Europe in the Middle Ages and lasted for several centuries, where it was ruled by kings who enslaved people under the framework of the theory of divine right, which is: that the king has a divine right over the people, and by virtue of this divine right, the kings possess authority, legislation, and judgment, and the people have no right in these matters, and the people are slaves with no opinion or will, but rather they must implement and obey, and the injustice and tyranny that befalls the nation comes from what the kings enjoy of the right to legislate and the right to authority. The people protested, revolutions took place, and various theories emerged to eliminate the theory of divine right and abolish it completely, and these two theories emerged in the West. They concluded that the people must direct their will by themselves because they are not slaves of the king, but are free, and as long as the people are the master, then they are the ones who possess legislation and implementation, and this idea succeeded after the bloody conflict, and parliamentary councils were found to act on behalf of the nation in exercising sovereignty, so they said the House of Representatives is master of itself, so the theory of sovereignty of the nation means that the nation has the power to direct its will and has the power to implement this will, and the theory that the nation is the source of powers means that the nation is the one that appoints the ruler on its behalf to rule in its name, whether the ruler is an executor (executive authority) or a judge (judicial authority), for both are rulers and each of them is an authority.
Since the nation can directly direct the will, meaning it can legislate, it does so itself through representatives on its behalf1, and therefore it is said that legislation is for the nation, and it is not said that the nation is the source of legislation, but it is said that legislation is for the nation because it is the one that directly exercises it2. As for authority, the nation cannot exercise it itself because it is practically impossible to do so, and therefore authority was not for the nation, but authority is exercised by others than the nation with authorization from it, and deputation from it, so it was the source of authority, meaning it is the one that gives authority to those it appoints on its behalf, just as the master appoints his slave, to implement what he wants him to implement according to his will, and so does the ruler, including the judge. He is a deputy of the nation and authorized by it to exercise authority, according to its will, meaning according to the laws it legislates.
This reality of the nation in the West in terms of being master of itself contradicts the reality of the Islamic nation. The Islamic nation is commanded to direct all its actions according to the provisions of Islamic law. The Muslim is a slave of God, so he does not direct his will or implement what he wants, but rather he directs his will with the commands and prohibitions of God, but he is the implementer, and therefore sovereignty is not for the nation, but for Islamic law. As for implementation, it is for the nation, and therefore authority was for the nation.
Since the nation cannot directly exercise authority itself, it must appoint someone on its behalf to exercise it.
Islamic law came and specified how it is exercised through allegiance and the caliphate system, so authority is for the nation, which chooses with its consent who exercises it on its behalf, but according to the provisions of Islamic law, meaning not according to its will but according to God's law. Hence, sovereignty was for Islamic law, and authority was for the nation3. End
1- It is obvious now that the idea that representatives legislate in the name of the nation is an idea that does not apply to reality and is a misleading idea. See in this book the chapter: The Separation of Powers in the Western System, which is a principle that does not exist in reality.
2- Among the values on which democracy is based and on which democracy depends for its existence and non-existence: ruling by the opinion of the majority in society, preventing the concentration of powers in the hands of the minority, or its exploitation, and representing the powers of the opinion of the people. These three values are impossible to achieve in reality, and the entire Western system is based on the mixing and overlap of powers and their concentration in the hands of the ruling parties, and legislation is carried out by a few jurists of law and judges, and the people are only consulted in very few of them, and the subject has very many details that are difficult to enumerate here, but democracy is a misleading imaginary philosophy that is impossible to exist in reality!
3- The twenty-fifth issue of Al-Waie magazine
