This is the English translation of «الدين المفتري عليه» (The Slandered Religion), Part 1 of 10.

The Introduction — Separating Religion from Power, Lest One Corrupt the Other (المقدمة — فصل الدين عن السلطة حتى لا يُفسد أحدهما الآخر)

The Question That Haunts Us

In a café in an Arab city, late at night, a young man asked his friend a question that hung in the air long after the conversation died down: “Why are we like this?”

Why do nations that raise no religious banner succeed — living stable and prosperous under the rule of law — while we, whose rulers’ speeches never lack verses and hadiths, and whose streets never lack mosques, drown in corruption, despotism, and backwardness? How did God’s name come to be invoked to justify the unjustifiable, and how did religion — which came to liberate man — become a muzzle clamped upon him?

This question is not new. Every generation has asked it in some form, and each has offered its answer. Some said the problem lies in the individuals — if only a righteous ruler would come, everything would be set right. And we tried that across the centuries: the righteous and the wicked took turns on the thrones, and Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz came as a just reformer, ruled two years, then departed — and everything returned as it was — because the problem was never in the man, but in the structure that swallowed him. Some said the problem lies in the enemies — endless foreign conspiracies. And conspiracies exist, we do not deny them, but they do not explain everything: did anyone conspire against us when we ourselves imposed hereditary rule upon ourselves fourteen centuries ago? Is it a conspiracy that today prevents us from holding accountable a ruler who plunders public money in broad daylight? And some said the problem lies in religion itself — let us abandon it as others did. But experience answers back: nations that kept their religion and separated it from their state — like Japan — flourished, while abandonment alone fixed no one’s condition. The problem, then, is not in the individuals, nor in the enemies alone, nor in religion — the problem is in the relationship between religion and power, in the mixing that corrupted both together across fourteen centuries. This book says so, and proves it station by station.

Have you never asked yourself: why does corruption rise the higher the religious slogans are raised? Why do so many young people turn away from religion — not because they read in it anything repulsive, but because they saw it on the lips of unjust rulers? This book is an attempt to answer that question — not with slogans, nor with weeping over ruins, but by tracing the wound back to its first source, then describing the remedy plainly.

And why this book now? Because the old answers have been exhausted: we tried waiting for the righteous and they never came; we tried revolutions and they devoured their children; we tried slogans and they remained ink on paper. And because a new generation is asking the old question with no taboos: a generation that saw regimes raising the name of religion while drowning in corruption, and saw nations not raising it living in dignity — so it is no longer convinced that the problem is “distance from religion” or “the conspiracies of enemies.” This generation deserves an honest answer with no oratory in it: a precise diagnosis of the disease, and a clear description of the cure.

The Thesis of This Book

This book stands on a single thesis: the great political deviation in Muslim history was not a departure from “the religious state,” but the result of mixing religion with power. For when sanctity fused with rule, both were corrupted together: politics was corrupted because the ruler became above criticism and accountability, and religion was corrupted because it turned from a relationship between servant and Lord into a tool in the sultan’s hand.

And note the precision of this thesis: it does not say that Muslims “drifted away from religion” — for religion was present at every station of deviation: on the pulpits, in the official sermons, and on the banners raised in civil wars. The problem was not religion’s absence, but its presence in the wrong place: on the throne instead of in the conscience, a seal on the sultan’s decisions instead of a restraint upon him.

And how does the mixing corrupt both parties? The mechanism is simple and terrifying at once. When the sacred merges with power, the ruler gains divine immunity: criticizing him becomes an attack on religion, opposing him becomes rebellion against God — so criticism dies, and with it accountability dies, and without accountability corruption spreads as fire spreads through dry kindling — indeed, injustice itself becomes sacred and beyond discussion. In return, religion turns from a message that liberates man into the mouthpiece of authority: a jurist who blesses every decision, a unified sermon read in every mosque by order from above, a religious slogan raised on a tank. Religion loses its credibility in souls, and people turn away from it — not from the ruler who disfigured it. Thus both parties lose: politics without accountability, and religion without trust.

Nor does the corruption stop at the ruler alone; it extends to the bearers of religion themselves — and this is the most dangerous loss of the mixing. The scholar who was the nation’s conscience and the refuge of the oppressed turns, when he draws near the palace, into an employee who blesses decisions before they are issued and forbids opposing the ruler after they are issued. The fatwa loses its sanctity, the scholars lose their dignity, and the people learn a bitter lesson: that official religion is not the religion in their hearts. And the greatest irony is that the fiercest defenders of mixing religion with power are not the sincere believers — but the rulers themselves, because the mixing grants them what no constitution grants: divine immunity against being questioned.

And the solution this book proposes is separation: a religion that stays between servant and Lord, pure of exploitation, and an authority that draws its legitimacy from the people, is bound by law, and is held accountable openly. Separation is not hostility to religion — it is its rescue, as we shall see.

The Standard: The Rightly Guided Caliphate

The years following the Prophet’s death, peace be upon him, were the standard by which we measure — not because they were a “theocratic state” in the modern sense, but because they embodied two principles that do not fall: the ruler is an agent of the nation, and obedience is conditional upon justice.

Picture the scene: Medina, days after the Prophet’s death, peace be upon him, the people in a bewilderment they had never known — revelation had ceased, and the leader who had gathered them was gone forever. Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, may God be pleased with him, stood before the people as a preacher and spoke words that became a political constitution before constitutions were known: “Obey me as long as I obey God in you; if I disobey Him, you owe me no obedience.”

Contemplate this sentence. It is not a coronation speech in which the ruler glorifies himself, but a contract between two parties: conditional obedience, limited authority, and a ruler declaring from the first day that he is accountable. He did not say “obey me because God chose me,” but “obey me as long as I obey God” — and if I disobey, no obedience. The ruler here is an agent of the nation, not God’s shadow on earth.

Nor were those years a theocracy in which priests ruled in heaven’s name — they were the practical embodiment of the principle of shura (consultation) laid down by the Qur’an: “and their affairs are decided by consultation among them,” “and consult them in the matter.” The ruler is chosen by bay’ah — that is, by declared consent — is held accountable openly, and is removed when he fails. This is the principle by which we measure all that came after.

And it is striking that this single principle was translated in the Rashidun era itself through four different mechanisms: Abu Bakr was chosen in the Saqifa of Banu Sa’ida by the pledge of those present, then by the general pledge; Umar was nominated by Abu Bakr then confirmed by the nation’s pledge; Uthman was chosen by the council of six whom Umar appointed; and Ali was pledged by the people of Medina after Uthman’s assassination. Four mechanisms, not one — and one unchanging principle: the nation’s consent and choice. If the principle could take multiple forms even in the seventh century, by what logic are we today demanded to freeze a single mechanism of that age?

And let us be honest with history: even that era was no crisis-free paradise — it ended with the assassination of Uthman, may God be pleased with him, then with a civil war between Ali and Muawiya. This very fact is part of the lesson, not its contradiction: it proves that individuals — however righteous — are not the guarantee; the true guarantee lies in the institutions that restrain the righteous before the wicked. When institutions were absent, even the generation of the Companions could not withstand the logic of the struggle for power.

And this is the difference between glorifying the past and learning from it: whoever glorifies the past demands its literal replication and finds it impossible; whoever learns from it extracts its principle and translates it into the language of his age, and finds it possible. This book belongs to the second camp.

The Principle, Not the Mechanism

And here a necessary warning, lest this book be misunderstood: when we say the deviation began with the shift “from the nation’s choice to hereditary rule,” we are not calling for replicating the mechanism of the seventh century CE — the gathering of Medina’s people to choose the caliph — for that was the mechanism of its age and does not suit a modern state of hundreds of millions. What we call for restoring is the principle: that the nation is the source of legitimacy, and the ruler is chosen not imposed, held accountable not sanctified, removed when he fails or turns despotic.

The principle is like the destination, and the mechanism like the mount: the destination of travel has been one since eternity, but man once rode the camel and today rides the airplane — so is whoever rides the airplane accused of betraying the destination of travel? So too with shura: an eternal value, its mechanism made by each age. The gathering of Medina’s people was the translation of the principle into the language of the seventh century; free elections, a constitution, separation of powers, and an independent judiciary are its translation into the language of the twenty-first century.

Whoever says “let us return to shura” in its literal historical sense misses the target — he replicates the husk and loses the kernel, demanding of a modern state the mechanism of tribal encampments. And whoever says “shura has fallen, so there is no alternative” also errs — he throws away the principle with the mechanism, and surrenders to despotism in the name of realism. The alternative is the principle itself with the institutions of the age: free elections, a constitution that restrains the ruler, separation of powers, an independent judiciary. Free election is no imported innovation; it is the bay’ah in the language of the age: a contract between the nation and the ruler, conditional upon justice, subject to dissolution.

And an objector will object: is not democracy and its institutions a Western innovation? The answer: the principle is ours — the conditional pledge and open accountability were born in Medina before they were born in any European capital. The mechanism is a human craft like the printing press and the radio: we use it because it works, not because it is Western or Eastern. And another will object: does not separation mean removing religion from life? The answer: separation from the state, not from society — the mosque stays full, the school stays free, the family stays devout, and society keeps its identity voluntarily. What is forbidden is only one thing: that religion become a stick in the ruler’s hand.

The Moment of Deviation: The Sanctification of Power

Then came the decisive moment. After the “Year of the Community” (41 AH), in which al-Hasan stepped down to spare blood, power settled with Muawiya in Damascus. And in his final years the step was taken that changed the entire course of Islamic history: the bay’ah was extracted for his son Yazid after him — a pledge imposed by force and inducement, which al-Husayn ibn Ali and Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr refused, because it annulled a foundation of rule: the ruler is chosen, not inherited.

Here — not before it, not after it — the essential deviation occurred: rule turned from a trust chosen by the nation into a kingdom inherited. Muawiya died in the year 60 AH, and Yazid sat on a throne the nation had never chosen, and the results were immediate and horrifying — but more dangerous than the immediate results was the new rule: from this day on, the caliphate would be decided by the sword and inheritance, not by shura and choice.

And from that moment the systematic mixing began: caliphs bearing religious titles and ruling by the sword, court jurists legitimizing blind obedience, and opponents accused of rebelling against religion rather than against the ruler. Criticizing authority became heresy, and religion became the guardian of the throne instead of the conscience of the nation.

Nor did the mixing remain a mere practical habit; with time it became a doctrine taught: theories were formulated obliging obedience to the one who seizes power even if he took it by the sword, and it was said that rebelling against the ruler — any ruler — is a sedition worse than injustice itself, until patience under tyranny became a religious virtue. Thus the system was completed: a sword that rules, a jurist who blesses, and a theory that silences the objector in religion’s name. And whoever objects thereafter is met not with argument but with accusation: Kharijite, innovator, heretic — for the battle was no longer political, to be settled by opinion, but religious, to be settled by excommunication.

And so the centuries followed as chapters of a single tragedy in different garbs: Umayyads who entrenched hereditary kingship and made the caliphate a family inheritance; Abbasids who revolted in the name of “al-Rida from the House of Muhammad” then wrapped despotism in religion’s garb and imposed doctrines by the lash in the “Mihna”; then the nation fragmented until it had three caliphs at once excommunicating one another, and taifa kings each seeking yesterday’s enemy against his Muslim neighbor; then came the Mamluk sultans who revived the caliphate as a rubber stamp certifying every military coup, and the Ottomans inherited the noble title to rule in its name for centuries; then came colonialism, which divided the nation by the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916 CE) and installed rulers drawing their legitimacy from London and Paris rather than their peoples, and employed religion at times to justify occupation; then the post-independence regimes inherited the colonial tools of repression in a nationalist garb, and Yazid’s pledge returned in the form of the ninety-nine-percent “referendums,” and criticizing the ruler became treason to the homeland after it had been rebellion against religion — the sanctity changed, the sanctification remained.

And at every station religion was present — not as a supreme value by which authority is judged, but as a seal on the ruler’s decisions. A religion invoked to bless, not to hold accountable; to drug, not to awaken.

Why Separation?

Because experience — fourteen centuries of experience — has proven that mixing corrupts both parties together, and that separation is what protects both together.

It corrupts politics first: when the ruler becomes “God’s shadow on earth,” objecting to him becomes objecting to God Himself, and accountability dies — and without accountability corruption spreads inevitably, because absolute power corrupts absolutely, whoever holds it. And more dangerous than financial corruption is that injustice itself becomes sacred: how do you object to a decision you were told is “God’s ruling”? Thus the mixing turned despotism from a political crime into a religious virtue.

And it corrupts religion second: when religion becomes the mouthpiece of authority, it loses its credibility in people’s souls, and they turn away from it rather than from the ruler. How many a young man abandoned religion — not because he read in it anything repulsive, but because he saw it used to justify repression and corruption? And the greatest loser each time was religion itself, when its name was glued to injustice, repression, and failure — while the rulers escaped with their money and palaces.

And modern evidence confirms it: Japan — with no religion running its state — lives stable and prosperous through the rule of law and accountability, while states that raised religious slogans drown in corruption and despotism. The lesson is not in religion’s presence or absence, but in its separation from power so that neither uses the other.

Indeed, separation rescues religion’s very reputation — the point the enthusiasts of mixing overlook. When a failing regime raises Islam’s banner then drowns in corruption and despotism, people do not say “the ruler failed” but “Islam failed” — and what the rulers earned is attributed to religion. Separate religion from the state and you rescue religion’s reputation from the rulers’ crimes, and return to the people a pure religion that reminds them of neither repression nor corruption.

And an objector will object: does not separation lead to moral dissolution and the loss of values? The answer: separation does not mean a state without values — law itself is a system of values: justice, equality, human dignity. What is forbidden is the ruler’s monopoly on interpreting religion and imposing it on people, not values themselves. Indeed, morals flourish more when they are a free choice rather than an imposed obligation — for virtue imposed by the lash is not virtue, but disguised fear.

Which is more honorable for religion: to be a crown on a ruler’s head, which he removes whenever he wishes and wears whenever he wishes — or to be a light in a believer’s heart that no one can snatch away? And which is more beneficial for politics: a ruler who rules in heaven’s name and is never questioned, or a ruler who rules in the people’s name and is questioned, held accountable, and removed?

The Method of the Book

The first part of this book is diagnosis: it traces how the mixing of religion with power became a method of rule across the ages — from Umayyad Damascus to Abbasid Baghdad, from the fragmentation of petty states to the Ottoman sultanate, from colonialism to the post-independence regimes. Six chapters telling a single story: how the mixing corrupted politics and religion together, station by station.

And the second part is solution: it proposes the full separation of religion from the state — religion between servant and Lord, and political legitimacy from the people through modern mechanisms. Chapter Seven explains what separation means exactly, and answers the great objection: was not religion intertwined with the state in the age of the Messenger and the Caliphs? And Chapter Eight answers the essential question: if religion is separated from the state, whence does the state draw its legitimacy? — From the people: free elections, a constitution that restrains the ruler, an independent judiciary, peaceful rotation of power, and transparency that enables accountability.

If you emerge from the first part seeing the mixing repeat in different garbs across the centuries — you will have grasped that the problem is structural, not personal, and that waiting for the righteous ruler is a delusion. And if you emerge from the second part seeing the alternative as possible through modern institutions rather than replicating the past — you will possess the map. And between diagnosis and solution lies this book’s entire message.

And let it be said plainly from the start: this book does not oppose religion; it defends it — liberating it from power’s captivity to return it to its rightful place: the heart and the conscience, not the palace and the throne.

Damascus… Year 60 of the Hijra

Damascus, Rajab 60 AH. In the caliph’s palace lies an octogenarian shaykh on his deathbed, after nineteen years ruling an empire stretching from Ifriqiya in the west to Khurasan in the east. Around him are courtiers and physicians, and outside the palace a capital waits: who will rule after the shaykh?

And the answer is known in advance — for the decision was taken years ago, and the pledge was imposed by force and inducement: the heir is the son, Yazid, whom the nation never chose. In days the shaykh will be buried in Damascus, the son will sit on the throne — and chapters of blood will begin, the first of them Karbala.

On that night the question was not “who is most fit?” but “who is the heir?” — and for the first time in Muslim history the matter of the caliphate was settled in the palace’s chambers rather than in the nation’s pledge. The ruler was no longer an agent of the people to be held accountable, but an owner of necks to be obeyed. That night is the night sanctified despotism was born — and all that came after it, from the Mihna to the hereditary republics, is but its echo.

So let us return there — to Damascus, in the year 60 of the Hijra — where our story begins.