The Patriarch Al-Rahi Calls for Islam to Change Itself and to Separate from Life and Politics
In Compliance with Secularization and the Western Civilization
(Translated)

The Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi gave a speech in the European Parliament in Brussels under the heading: “The results of the clash taking place in the Middle-East upon the Christians and their future”. He held Islam responsible for the danger posed to the Christians when he concluded his recommendations under the heading of the “Long-term solution” in which he called the international community to assist Islam to “To take the step which Christianity took and that is the separation of religion from the state” and within that he called Islam to:

A – Liberate itself from fundamentalism and from referring back to the message of the Sharee’ah i.e. a message that goes beyond the teachings of the Qur’an.

B – To enter into the modern era with its positive facets and to open itself to the values that globalization has presented for the progress of the countries.

C – To adopt the ‘International Declaration of Human Rights’ and to implement it to guarantee the well-being of all of the citizens in the countries without racial or religious discrimination and to respect every living being (This is word for word as taken from the news site Al-Wataniy for Media [in Arabic] 28/04/2016).

This talk that came from Patriarch al-Rahi in the tone of an avid adviser, represents in truth, insolence against Islam and its followers and an insult and affront to both of them. This is as he has erected himself as a director for Islam and made himself and the international community custodians over it whilst he has provided a shallow and incompetent view of Islaam that is need of being helped by others for it to be able to arrive to safe land and reach maturity! Indeed, and who should be entrusted with this help and assistance?! The international community represented in the European parliament that he is addressing and the western states who do not harbor, and not even for a single day, towards Islam and his Muslims, anything other than hostility and war!

Verily Islam, O Patriarch is not in need of anyone to help it because it is the final Deen of Allah Almighty that came to help the people, guide them and take them out of the darkness and into the light. The international community that you are calling to help Islam is that which is need of the help of Islam, the guidance of its Sharee’ah. Indeed, the Qur’aan has addressed you, O people of the Book, specifically when He (swt) said:

(يَا أَهْلَ الْكِتَابِ قَدْ جَاءَكُمْ رَسُولُنَا يُبَيِّنُ لَكُمْ كَثِيرًا مِمَّا كُنْتُمْ تُخْفُونَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَيَعْفُو عَنْ كَثِيرٍ قَدْ جَاءَكُمْ مِنَ اللَّهِ نُورٌ وَكِتَابٌ مُبِينٌ * يَهْدِي بِهِ اللَّهُ مَنِ اتَّبَعَ رِضْوَانَهُ سُبُلَ السَّلَامِ وَيُخْرِجُهُمْ مِنَ الظُّلُمَاتِ إِلَى النُّورِ بِإِذْنِهِ وَيَهْدِيهِمْ إِلَى صِرَاطٍ مُسْتَقِيمٍ)

“O People of the Scripture, there has come to you Our Messenger making clear to you much of what you used to conceal of the Scripture and overlooking much. There has come to you from Allah a light and a clear Book. By which Allah guides those who pursue His pleasure to the ways of peace and brings them out from darknesses into the light, by His permission, and guides them to a straight path” [Al-Ma’idah: 15-16].

So it is what guides you all and it is not you who guides it. And what Muslims need today (and not Islam) is to resume their Islamic life and apply the Sharee’ah of Islam once again. That is so that they can be taken out of the state and the condition of decline that they have been living in for a period of time and so that they can take you and all of humanity out from the oppression of the capitalist civilization, globalization and their international law.

As for your call for Islam to separate itself from politics then that was not out of any concern for Islam or its people. That is because the call to separate Islam from politics represents a call to replace, change and corruptly distort Islaam and remove its Sharee’ah. And it is a call for Islam to be defeated by the western secular civilization just like the Church was defeated by it in the past.

That is because Islam, O Patriarch, is a comprehensive civilization. It came with a comprehensive system for life, the society and the State, whether this is accepted or not. Allah Ta’Aalaa said:

(وَنَزَّلْنَا عَلَيْكَ الْكِتَابَ تِبْيَانًا لِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ)

“And we have revealed the Book as an explanation for everything” [An-Nahl: 89].

Indeed, politics is the work of all of the Prophets that Allah Ta’Aalaa sent to guide mankind. The Messenger (saw) said:

«كَانَتْ بَنُو إِسْرَائِيلَ تَسُوسُهُمُ الأَنْبِيَاءُ، كُلَّمَا هَلَكَ نَبِيٌّ خَلَفَهُ نَبِيٌّ، وَإِنَّهُ لاَ نَبِيَّ بَعْدِي، وَسَيَكُونُ خُلَفَاءُ فَيَكْثُرُونَ»

“The Children of Isra’eel had their political affairs taken care of by the Anibiyaa’ (Prophets); every time a Prophet would perish another would succeed him. And indeed, there is no Prophet (to come) after me, but there will be Khulafaa’ and they will be numerous” (Agreed Upon).

Allah Ta’Aalaa, when addressing His Prophet Dawud (as), said:

(يَا دَاوُودُ إِنَّا جَعَلْنَاكَ خَلِيفَةً فِي الْأَرْضِ فَاحْكُمْ بَيْنَ النَّاسِ بِالْحَقِّ)

“O David, indeed We have made you a successor upon the earth, so judge between the people in truth” [Saad: 26].

And you know, O Patriarch, that the Prophet of Allah, Dawud and his son Suleiman (as), were both Kings who ruled their subjects by the Sharee’ah that Allah had revealed upon His Prophet Musa (as). And he was the Prophet who Allah Ta’Aalaa had revealed the Torah to, the Book that the Church continued to rely upon, as part of its holy Book under the name of the ‘Old Testament’, until this day. So if the Church decided to separate the religion from the state after its failure and it defeat before the philosophers of enlightenment and secularism, then this is its affair. As for Islam, then it has a different affair.

And to be clear to you and to the West whom you addressed in the European Parliament, that Islam, which is the eternal Deen of Allah Ta’Aalaa until the Day of Judgment, will not have a day in which it emulates the Church or any other religions. That is because it is higher than everything and nothing is higher than it. There will never be a day in which it surrenders to a philosopher or any other legislator and it will never lay down its weapon before the man-made ideologies.

And you, O Patriarch, when you call for Islam to be liberated of what you have called fundamentalism, then this indicates clearly that you attribute it to Islam, so as to be liberated from it. It follows that your repeated attack against fundamentalism is in fact an attack against Islam itself!

Then comes the most serious and most offensive matter represented in your call for Islam to abandon the Sharee’ah! And you dare to propose to us that the Islamic Sharee’ah goes “Beyond the teachings of the Qur’an”!!!

And so you are now teaching us what conforms with the Qur’an and that which goes beyond it! It is as if you have made yourself the custodian over the Qur’an and its guard, so as to guide the Muslims to how they should read it and apply it! Come O Patriarch, let us now teach you some matters about our Sharee’ah:

The Sharee’ah of Islam is not a legislation that has been set and placed down by anybody; not by the Sahaabah, not the Mujtahideen, not the rest of the Fuqahaa’ and not anyone else. And there is nothing in Islam, like there is in the Church, a religious institution or religious authority, that gives itself the right to legislate and make the laws. There is no founding (of anything new), adjusting, changing, suspension, distortion or deviation.

Rather, Islam laments the distortion and deviation from the Deen of Allah that took place in respect to the followers of the previous beliefs, when they made and decided the Halaal and Haraam themselves. Allah Ta’Aalaa said:

(فَوَيْلٌ لِلَّذِينَ يَكْتُبُونَ الْكِتَابَ بِأَيْدِيهِمْ ثُمَّ يَقُولُونَ هَذَا مِنْ عِنْدِ اللَّهِ لِيَشْتَرُوا بِهِ ثَمَنًا قَلِيلًا فَوَيْلٌ لَهُمْ مِمَّا كَتَبَتْ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَوَيْلٌ لَهُمْ مِمَّا يَكْسِبُونَ)

“So woe to those who write the "scripture" with their own hands, then say, "This is from Allah," in order to exchange it for a small price. Woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn” [Al-Baqarah: 79].

And He (swt) said:

(وَلَا تَقُولُوا لِمَا تَصِفُ أَلْسِنَتُكُمُ الْكَذِبَ هَذَا حَلَالٌ وَهَذَا حَرَامٌ لِتَفْتَرُوا عَلَى اللَّهِ الْكَذِبَ إِنَّ الَّذِينَ يَفْتَرُونَ عَلَى اللَّهِ الْكَذِبَ لَا يُفْلِحُونَ)

“And do not say about what your tongues assert of untruth, "This is lawful and this is unlawful," to invent falsehood about Allah. Indeed, those who invent falsehood about Allah will not succeed” [An-Nahl: 116].

The Islamic Sharee’ah represents a host of Ahkam (legal rulings) which the Mujtahidun (Scholars) of Islam extract from the divinely revealed texts represented in the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Messenger (saw). The Fuqahaa’ (jurists) And Mujtahidun of Islam did not bring anything in respect to that from themselves. As for what is called Ijtihaad in our Islamic culture, then this does not mean that the scholars invent rulings from themselves or based them upon their own ideas. Rather, Ijtihaad in accordance to its precise and accurate definition is: “The exhaustion of effort to acquire the Ahkam Ash-Shar’iyah from their detailed evidences”. This means expending the utmost effort and capability to understand the detailed address of Allah Ta’Aalaa in the Qur’aan and the Sunnah, in order to extract the Ahkaam Ash-Sharee’ah from it. Allah Ta’Aalaa said in Al-Qur’an Al-‘Azheem:

(ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَاكَ عَلَى شَرِيعَةٍ مِنَ الْأَمْرِ فَاتَّبِعْهَا وَلَا تَتَّبِعْ أَهْوَاءَ الَّذِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ)

“Then We put you, [O Muhammad], upon a Sharee’ah concerning the matter [of the Deen]; so follow it and do not follow the inclinations of those who do not know” [Al-Jaathiyah: 18].

So it would have been better for you not to have proposed to us the view of separating the Sharee’ah from the Qur’an, to have stuck to your place and left its matter to its people.

As for your call for Islam to open up to “The values that globalization has presented”, then this globalization, that you are giving glad tidings of, represents a spreading evil that brings pain and suffering to humanity today and afflicts it with calamities and catastrophes. It represents a system that has made the economics of the world as a single whole economics subservient to one system. No borders stand before it whether political or legislative, in the case where the states of the word all submit and are subservient to a single economic legislation. It is the capitalist system and its implementation is overseen by the WTO (World Trade Organization) where the big fish swallow the small fish and where the wealth of humanity is concentrated in the hands of a greedy handful that do not exceed one percent of the world’s population. This globalization, O Patriarch, makes the economics of the peoples weak and needy (including your people in Lebanon) and their resources a source of plunder for the major companies that the US and its partners foster in the world. Is this what you are calling Islam to surrender to and be melted within?!

If, however you meant globalization in its newly added meaning in which is humanity transforms to embrace one single system and structure of concepts, values and legislations, which of course is represented in the Western civilization as you clearly called for when you called for Islam to “adopt the international declaration of human rights and apply it”. If this is what you meant, then with no ambiguity at all, you are calling us to wipe out and efface our Islam which represents the most distinguished and distinct civilization to have existed, and for it to be integrated and melted into the Western Civilizational system and set-up. This, without doubt, does not represent an invitation based on an avid concern or a call based on sincerity to Islam and its people, O one holding the position of Patriarch.

Then, O Patriarch, did it come across your mind, whilst you were lecturing the members of the European parliament and calling for Islam to be molded into the globalization of the western civilization, that amongst those members of parliament are those who have authored books and written articles ringing alarm bells about globalization which does not leave to a people or nation any particularity, sanctity or independent character and personality?!

We, O Patriarch, give you glad tidings that the globalization of the western civilization will never reach its goal and will never accomplish its desired ends, and that the Islamic civilization that has continued to be an archrival to it is poised to inherit it and turn its page soon by the permission of Allah Ta’Aalaa. If you had only made the pages white rather than blacken them and if only you had sufficed yourself in your position as the Maronite Patriarch, instead of giving instruction and direction to the Muslims in respect to their Deen and advising them in it.

And finally we can conclude with the statement of Allah Ta’Aalaa:

(وَلَوْ أَنَّ أَهْلَ الْكِتَابِ آمَنُوا وَاتَّقَوْا لَكَفَّرْنَا عَنْهُمْ سَيِّئَاتِهِمْ وَلَأَدْخَلْنَاهُمْ جَنَّاتِ النَّعِيمِ * وَلَوْ أَنَّهُمْ أَقَامُوا التَّوْرَاةَ وَالْإِنْجِيلَ وَمَا أُنْزِلَ إِلَيْهِمْ مِنْ رَبِّهِمْ لَأَكَلُوا مِنْ فَوْقِهِمْ وَمِنْ تَحْتِ أَرْجُلِهِمْ مِنْهُمْ أُمَّةٌ مُقْتَصِدَةٌ وَكَثِيرٌ مِنْهُمْ سَاءَ مَا يَعْمَلُونَ)

“And if only the people of the Scripture had believed and had become Al-Muttaqun (the pious) We would indeed have blotted out their sins and admitted them to Gardens of pleasure. And if only they had acted according to the Taurah and the Injeel, and what has (now) been sent down to them from their Lord (the Quran), they would surely have gotten provision from above them and from underneath their feet. There are from among them people who are on the right course but it is evil what many of them do” [Al-Maa’idah 65-66].