This is the English translation of «الدين المفتري عليه» (The Slandered Religion), Part 8 of 10.

Chapter Seven: Separating Religion from the State — Religion Between Servant and Lord, Not a Tool in Authority’s Hand (الفصل السابع: فصل الدين عن الدولة — الدين بين العبد وربه، لا أداةً بيد السلطة)

Picture a Friday in Cairo. The imam mounts the pulpit — but he opens no Qur’an and no notebook of his own; rather a paper that reached him from the Ministry of Endowments: a pre-written text he must read word for word. And at the same moment, in Aswan and Alexandria and thousands of villages, other imams are reading the same words in the same order — because the ministry decided in 2016 that the Friday sermon would be “unified” and pre-written. Whoever adhered to the text earned a financial reward, and whoever deviated from it was exposed to discipline, and perhaps had his preaching license withdrawn. And when the imams protested and launched a hashtag rejecting the “written sermon,” and when al-Azhar’s Council of Senior Scholars rejected the decision, describing it as freezing religious discourse, the ministry went its way — because the decision was never religious in the first place — but political. And matters reached the point of dedicating one of the unified sermons to talking about “the importance of the Suez Canal”!

Stop here and ask yourself: is this religion’s function? Was revelation sent down so that sermons be written in employees’ offices? Was the pulpit created to be authority’s loudspeaker?

This scene is no aberrant exception; it is the honest picture of a disease fourteen centuries old: religion, when it falls into authority’s hand, turns from guidance of hearts into a tool of rule; and authority, when it wears religion’s cloak, turns from serving people into a sanctity above criticism. And this chapter proposes the remedy: that religion be separated from the state — not in hostility to religion, but to rescue it, and to rescue politics with it.

The Sum of the Diagnosis

Across six chapters we traced one story repeating in different garbs, and now we name the disease by its full name: whenever sanctity merges with rule, politics and religion are corrupted together. Umayyads who bequeathed rule in the caliphate’s name, Abbasids who imposed doctrines by the lash, taifa kings who fought in the sect’s name, sultans who bought legitimacy with the Friday sermon, colonizers who employed religion to justify occupation, and republic presidents who rig elections and hire muftis.

And the mechanism is one every time — contemplate it well: the ruler grants himself an unquestionable sanctity, becoming above accountability; and religion is used as a cover, losing its credibility in people’s souls. And when the young man sees religion coupled with despotism in every news bulletin, he does not hate despotism alone — he may turn away from religion itself. This is the great loss the guardians of mixing never noticed: the Muslims lost not only the rulers’ justice, but nearly lost their children’s trust in their religion. Defending religion today is not by more mixing, but by the separation that restores to religion its dignity and to politics its function.

And contemplate the mechanism of corruption from within: the ruler of whom it is said he is “God’s shadow” does not fear the people’s accountability, and the scholar who draws his salary from the palace does not fear God’s anger as much as he fears the minister’s anger. So the scale of fear upon which every moral system stands is disturbed: fear of God turns into fear of authority, and fear of the Reckoning on Judgment Day turns into calculations of office and reward. And when blind obedience is rewarded and the word of truth punished, the scholars fall silent one by one — not because they were convinced, but because the price is steep. Thus religion dies a slow death: not by proclaiming its atheism, but by turning its people into employees.

What Does Separation Mean?

The separation of religion from the state — as this book proposes it — does not mean fighting religion nor excluding it from public life; it means three clear things, which we present here not as abstract slogans but as scenes from the reality you know:

The State Adopts No Sect and Imposes No Doctrine

When the state adopts a sect, it does not protect religion as it claims, but monopolizes it. The Ministry of Endowments that issues a unified sermon — as we saw in the opening scene — does not unite the Muslims, but unites authority’s voice in the mosques. And the official mufti who draws his salary from the state does not rule by what his learning dictates, but by what his job dictates; and we saw in history how the Ottoman “Shaykh al-Islam” office turned into an employee the sultan appoints and dismisses, until the fatwa became a rubber stamp on the palace’s decisions.

And more dangerous than all of that: courts trying people for their beliefs. And this is no modern innovation; in the third century AH the caliph al-Ma’mun imposed the doctrine of the “created Qur’an” by the lash, and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal was imprisoned and flogged for refusing to say what the ruler dictated. That was an inquisition of consciences in religion’s name, and the same idea remains alive whenever a thinker stands before a judge — not because he stole or killed, but because he said an opinion the authority disliked. And in today’s Egypt, preaching without the ministry’s license is punished by prison and fine, and imams are granted financial rewards for adhering to the official text. Ask yourself: who owns religious truth in such a system? The scholar who owns the proof, or the employee who owns the seal?

Religion Is Not Authority’s Fuel

Look at the titles and contemplate what they hide: the matter began with a modest, honest title — “Successor of the Messenger of God,” that is, his deputy in managing the Muslims’ affairs — then the title swelled until it became “God’s caliph” and “God’s shadow on earth.” And what is the difference between the two titles? The difference between a ruler held accountable and a ruler worshipped. For whoever claims to be God’s shadow is not asked about a budget nor about a military defeat; and whoever objects to him objects not to a failed politician, but to “religion” itself.

And the centuries went on in this vein: fatwas justifying repression and forbidding rebellion against the ruler even if he flogs your back, religious slogans raised on tanks to hide politics’ impotence, a Friday sermon in which the sultans’ names are mentioned weekly — legitimacy bought wholesale. And when the ruler fails thereafter — as one who is never held accountable inevitably fails — the failure is attributed to the religion he armored himself with. Religion here is not merely an innocent victim, but the fuel by which despotism’s fire was kindled.

And today the same image repeats in republican garbs: a president wanting to extend himself consults the official mufti, who rules it permissible “to ward off sedition”; rigged elections blessed by a loyal preacher as the “nation’s consensus”; repression of the opposition wrapped in fatwas of “obeying the guardian of affairs.” The titles changed — no one says “God’s shadow” anymore — but the logic is one: a borrowed sanctity immunizing the ruler from questioning. So when you hear a political fatwa always pouring into the ruler’s interest, know that you are before the modern face of the employed Shaykh al-Islam.

Freedom of Belief Is a Right Protected by Law

Picture a courtroom: a man standing in the dock — not because he stole money nor because he shed blood, but because he wrote an opinion in a book. The judge reads the charge in a solemn voice, the audience shake their heads, as though we had returned to the Inquisition’s courts. This scene — in different forms — still repeats in our world, and it is the utter opposite of God’s words: “There is no compulsion in religion.”

The separation of religion from the state means that the Muslim, the Christian, the Jew, and the non-religious — all are equal citizens before the law, and each one’s religion is a matter between him and his Lord. The state that protects freedom of belief does not weaken religion as the hardliners claim, but protects it from becoming a ready-made charge fabricated against opponents. For when the thinker is imprisoned in religion’s name, religion does not triumph — its sons lose one by one.

With these three things religion is freed from authority’s captivity and returns to its rightful place: the heart, the conscience, the mosque — not the palace and parliament. And politics is freed from false sanctity and becomes what it must be: management of public affairs for which its holders are accountable.

The Price Religion Itself Pays

Some may think the loser from religion’s employment is politics alone — that it is tainted by false sanctity — but the truth is that the greatest loser is religion itself. For religion, when it turns into a government department, is treated as government departments are treated: with mockery and indifference.

Contemplate the employed imam: a man who studied Sharia for years to guide people, only to find himself a reader of official bulletins, reading what was written for him. Do you think the worshippers do not feel it? People are smarter than the employees imagine; they distinguish between the word that comes from the heart and the word that comes from the ministerial envelope. So they listen with their bodies and are absent with their hearts, and leave the mosque as they entered: they heard no sermon but a statement.

Indeed, the very conflict between the official religion’s institutions exposes the truth: when al-Azhar’s Council of Senior Scholars rejected the unified-sermon decision, describing it as freezing religious discourse, the dispute was not jurisprudential — but a power struggle between two official institutions over who owns the right to speak in religion’s name. What religion is this whose affairs are run by the logic of competing ministries?

And ask yourself the hardest question: how many a young man turned away from religion — not because religion is false, but because the faces that presented it to him were the faces of employees justifying injustice? The most dangerous thing the mixing does is make hatred of despotism a path to hatred of religion — an unforgivable crime, for it wastes upon the nation its most precious possession: its children’s trust in its guidance.

This is why we say separation is religion’s rescue before it is politics’ reform: return religion to the mosque, the heart, and the conscience, and you will see how it recovers its health when freed from the function of justification.

And there is another priceless loss: the pulpit that cannot criticize the ruler cannot reform society. For the preacher bound by the official text can speak of “the importance of the Suez Canal,” but cannot speak of the corruption plundering the nation’s wealth, nor of the injustice crushing the weak — because criticizing corruption may touch the decision-makers. So religion turns from a force of social reform into a social drug: drugging consciences instead of awakening them. And what religion is this that stays silent before injustice? Separation returns to the pulpit its courage: a preacher free of authority can speak the word of truth in injustice’s face — not in the ruler’s face as a ruler, but in injustice’s face as injustice.

Answering the Objections

First: Was Religion Not Intertwined with the State in the Messenger’s and the Caliphs’ Age?

An objector will say: religion was intertwined with the state in the age of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and things were fine — so why separation now? And the answer is in three points — contemplate them dispassionately:

First: the Prophet’s age is an unrepeatable case — the two authorities gathered in a person supported by revelation, a condition no one after him owns. The Prophet is infallible in what he conveys from his Lord, so it is inconceivable that he exploit religion for personal interest. And the moment he died, the question “who decides?” became political — settled by shura and bay’ah in the Saqifa of Banu Sa’ida — not revelation awaited. So whoever demands today the combining of the two authorities as in the prophetic age, let him first bring us a prophet supported by revelation!

Second: even the caliphs’ age was not as ideal as pictured in rousing sermons — it ended with the assassination of Uthman ibn Affan and a grinding civil war between Ali and Muawiya. Thirty years only is the age of the experiment, and its last third was blood and sedition. So even in the brightest ages the mixing was the seed of crisis, and no sooner had the Companions’ generation gone than it exploded.

Third: everyone who came after them claiming to combine the two authorities granted himself an unproven sanctity — and this is what the Umayyads, Abbasids, and those after them exploited, until the title turned from “Successor of the Messenger of God” to “God’s caliph.” Note the dangerous linguistic shift: the deputy of the Messenger is held accountable, but “God’s caliph” — who dares hold him accountable?

So the prophetic model is not imitated in its form (the merging), for its condition — the Prophet himself — is gone forever; rather its values are taken (justice, accountability, human dignity) and institutions built for them suited to the age. We do not demand a rupture with the past, but a smart fidelity to it: we take the spirit and renew the mechanism.

Second: Is Secularism Not Unbelief?

This is the most dangerous objection because it plays on the religious sentiment’s chord, and its answer needs linguistic precision before it is political. Distinguish between two things with no relation to one another: state secularism means the institution’s neutrality — that the state as an institution adopts no religion and excommunicates no one; and atheism is an individual’s stance on God’s existence. No one asks you — in the model we propose — to disbelieve or to abandon your prayer; only the ruler is asked not to trade in your religion.

And the living proof is before you: Senegal — a state more than ninety percent of whose people are Muslim — whose constitution states in its first article that “the Republic is secular, democratic, and social,” and forbids political parties from identifying with a particular religion. Have the Senegalese disbelieved? The mosques are full, the Sufi orders active, popular piety deep — but the state does not own religion and religion does not own the state. And the neutral state — note — does not impose atheism either; neutrality is in both directions: no religion imposed from above, no atheism imposed from above. Much of the fear of the word “secularism” is fear of a word, not of a content; once you know the content — a neutral state protecting your religion from employment — the fear vanishes and reason remains.

And it also protects religious minorities from the majority’s tyranny: the state that adopts the majority’s sect makes the minority second-class citizens, discriminated against in the name of “official identity.” As for the neutral state, all are equal in it: no preference for a Muslim over a Christian in employment, litigation, or dignity. Neutrality here is not against the majority’s religion, but the sole guarantee of everyone’s living in peace in one homeland.

Third: And What About Applying the Sharia?

And here a precise distinction is needed, absent from most debates: the Sharia in its essence is a system of purposes and values — justice, and the preservation of life, property, honor, and dignity — before it is a text of punishments. And when politicians turned it into an electoral slogan or a lash in the ruler’s hand, they wronged it more than its enemies wronged it.

And history testifies to jurisprudence’s own flexibility: Umar ibn al-Khattab — the justest who ruled after Abu Bakr — suspended the theft penalty in the year of famine when hunger struck the people, because the Sharia itself considers context and necessity. And the penalties in jurisprudence have strict conditions to begin with, and doubts annul them. So the Sharia is not a rigid list of punishments imposed in heaven’s name, but a method of justice translated into laws debated in parliament and voted upon — and the Muslim majority will choose its values voluntarily through its representatives, and this is firmer and more enduring than any top-down imposition. And ask yourself: which “application of the Sharia” benefits Islam more: an elected parliament legislating just laws inspired by its values, or a despotic ruler cutting a petty thief’s hand while he and his aides plunder the state’s treasury?

And note an irony exposing the employment’s falsity: in numerous constitutions the phrase “the Sharia is the principal source of legislation” is written in large letters, then the laws are legislated after it as the ruler wishes, with no watcher. The Sharia here is constitutional décor, not an actual reference — invoked when the ruler needs a cover, absented when it blocks his path. Is this “applying the Sharia” or employing it? The true Sharia begins with justice in dividing wealth and holding the big thieves accountable before the small, not with parading punishments upon the weak.

Two Witnesses from the World: Japan and Senegal

We leave theorizing and look at reality, for witnesses speak louder than sermons.

Japan: a fully secular state by constitutional text. Article Twenty of the 1947 constitution states that “freedom of religion is guaranteed to all, and no religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority… and the State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.” And this separation was no intellectual luxury; before 1945 Japan lived the opposite experiment: “State Shinto” — a religion merged with authority, in which families were registered in temples for social-control purposes, and emperor worship was taught in schools — and the result was militarization and a catastrophic war. And after the constitutional separation, Japan lived stable and prosperous: its prosperity came from the rule of law, accountability, and discipline — not from a religion ruling. And Shinto and Buddhism are present in culture and personal life — but they do not rule. Even the controversy stirred by Prime Minister Nakasone’s official visit to the Yasukuni shrine in 1985 tells you of the principle’s vitality: society itself watches any rapprochement between religion and the state and rejects it. And even the emperor himself — who was worshipped before the war — turned by the constitution into a “symbol of the state,” not a divine ruler: political sanctity was abolished entirely, and symbolic dignity remained without authority.

Senegal: the witness closest to us, for it is a Muslim state. Its constitution proclaims it “secular, democratic, and social,” and its Muslim people saw in that no unbelief and no conspiracy, but a guarantee of everyone’s freedom. And it has known not a single military coup since its independence in 1960. And in 2024 it gave the world a living lesson: President Macky Sall tried to postpone the presidential elections; the Constitutional Court annulled his decision; the elections were held on time; the opposition candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye — who had left prison weeks before the elections — won with 54.2%; and the president handed over power peacefully on the second of April. A secular, democratic Muslim state — not a theory in a book, but breaking news from Dakar.

The lesson from both witnesses is one: the lesson is not in religion’s presence or absence, but in its separation from authority so that neither uses the other. Religion flourishes where it is free, and withers where it is employed. And this is the conclusion that spares volumes: separate and be saved; mix and be corrupted.

The Conclusion

The separation of religion from the state is not hostility to religion — it is its rescue. Fourteen centuries of mixing produced rulers above criticism and a religion that lost people’s trust. And separation returns each to its function: religion guides consciences, and the state is run by competence and held accountable by law.

Fourteen centuries of experience suffice for judgment: every political project that armored itself with religion ended in despotism, and every religion that armored itself with politics ended in losing trust. And the equation is clear, with no ambiguity: a religion free of authority, and an authority subject to law.

But a question poses itself insistently after all we have said: if sanctity is no longer the source of legitimacy, whence does the state draw its legitimacy? And how are the mechanisms of choice, accountability, and removal built in the modern state? That is what the next chapter answers.