This is the English translation of «الدين المفتري عليه» (The Slandered Religion), Part 9 of 10.

Chapter Eight: The Source of Legitimacy and Its Mechanism — How the Ruler Is Chosen, Held Accountable, and Removed (الفصل الثامن: مصدر الشرعية والآلية — كيف يُختار الحاكم وكيف يُحاسَب ويُعزَل)

Picture the morning of the twenty-fourth of March 2024 in Dakar, Senegal’s capital. Long queues before the polling stations since dawn: workers, employees, students, standing patiently for each to place a paper in a wooden box. A few weeks before this morning, the likeliest candidate had been a cell’s inmate; and the outgoing president had tried to postpone the elections altogether by decree. The people went out to the streets angry, and the Constitutional Court spoke its word: the postponement is unconstitutional, and the elections on time. And in the evening of polling day the results began coming in: the man out of prison — Bassirou Diomaye Faye — wins with 54.2% of the votes. And only nine days later, on the second of April, the former president stood handing over power peacefully to the one who had been his prisoner weeks before.

Stand before this scene and ask yourself: what made this possible? Is it the president’s good morals? Or is there something stronger than morals: institutions that work even when the ruler does not want them to work? This Senegalese scene sums up this whole chapter: legitimacy from the people, and the mechanism institutions, not individuals.

The Essential Question

If religion is separated from the state, whence does the state draw its legitimacy? The answer this book proposes is simple in wording, deep in meaning: from the people. The nation — not the sacred text, nor history, nor “national necessity,” nor the “stability” every despot invokes — is the source of authorities. And the ruler is its agent: it chooses him by its will, binds him by its law, holds him accountable openly, and removes him when he fails or turns despotic.

Contemplate the word “agent”: the agent does not own, but manages what he does not own for the benefit of who owns, and is held accountable for every dirham. So the ruler in this conception is a senior employee, not an obeyed master; and his contract with the nation is conditional upon justice and subject to dissolution. And this is the principle the Rightly Guided Caliphate embodied in its first form, when Abu Bakr al-Siddiq stood — the first day he assumed office — and said: “Obey me as long as I obey God in you; if I disobey Him, you owe me no obedience.” Note the phrasing: obedience conditional upon justice, and the pledge a contract, not a blind pledge.

And this meaning — the ruler an agent, not an owner — has deep roots in Islamic jurisprudence itself: agency is a contract between the principal and the agent; the principal owns the right to remove his agent whenever he wishes, and the agent is a trustee, not a disposer of his own property. So if this is agency’s ruling over counted dirhams, how about an agency over an entire nation’s destinies? The principle “the nation chooses, holds accountable, and removes” is no imported innovation, but jurisprudence itself applied to politics.

And it is the same principle we demand to restore today — not by the seventh century’s mechanism (the pledge in the Saqifa), but by the twenty-first century’s institutions.

But the principle alone does not suffice; for history is full of beautiful principles that died for lack of mechanism. What prevents the ruler — after being elected — from turning against those who elected him? The answer: five institutional pillars, which we present below not as wishes but as tested engineering.

The Pillars of the Just Modern State

1. Free and Fair Elections — The Bay’ah in the Language of the Age

Free elections are no imported democratic luxury, but the modern translation of the bay’ah: a contract between the nation and the ruler, conditional upon justice, subject to dissolution. But the paper in the box does not make democracy alone; how many a despot wins with ninety-nine percent of the votes! True elections need precise institutional engineering, the first of which is an elections commission independent in deed, not in name.

And what does independence mean here? Three conditions the successful experiments have agreed upon: first, that the commission’s members be non-partisan, appointed by national consensus, not by presidential order — for whoever the ruler alone appoints owes him loyalty. And international standards for election administration have recommended that members be appointed with parliament’s approval and enjoy immunity against arbitrary removal. Second, budget independence: a commission awaiting its allocations from the government month after month is a captive commission — for whoever owns the money owns the decision. Third, a defined term not open to indefinite renewal, lest the commission’s chief turn into the authority’s permanent employee; in Kenya, for instance, the members of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission are appointed for a single six-year term, non-renewable; and in Botswana the conference of all parties takes part in nominating members, so trust is built, not imposed.

And the system is completed with courts deciding electoral appeals swiftly and fairly, and with local and international monitoring of the polling and counting. And ask yourself as you read: are elections whose result everyone knows before they are held elections or theater? The difference between them is not in the boxes, but in who runs the boxes and who guards them.

And a final element in electoral integrity remains, no less important: political money. For elections in which the rich buy votes and publicity are not free even if their boxes are transparent. Hence the successful experiments impose caps on electoral spending, oblige candidates to disclose their funding sources, and grant parties equal public support, so competition is not the monopoly of millionaires. For the vote bought with money is a stolen vote even if placed in the box by its owner’s hand.

2. A Constitution That Binds the Ruler — Not One Tailored to His Measure

The constitution is the written “social contract”: it defines the ruler’s powers and their limits, separates the authorities (legislative, executive, judicial), and safeguards rights and freedoms. But constitutions — note — may be the most dangerous tools of despotism when written to beautify it rather than bind it.

And the Ottoman lesson is still alive: the Ottoman constitution was issued in 1876 and the reformers cheered — but Sultan Abdulhamid suspended it in 1878 and ruled after it thirty years of absolute rule. Why? Because the ruler was above the constitution, not beneath it. A constitution that does not truly bind the ruler is worthless — the true constitution is the one that can say “no” to the ruler and be heard.

And note that the Ottoman constitution was “granted” by the sultan, not “contracted” with the nation; and whoever grants can withhold. And this is the essential difference between a constitution the ruler bestows as a favor — suspending it whenever he wishes — and a constitution the nation’s representatives write as a contract — which no one can abolish unilaterally. So ask of any constitution presented to you: who wrote it? And to whom is it subject?

Hence three controls for a serious constitution: first, entrenching the articles of presidential terms and basic rights against easy amendment, lest people wake one day to an amended constitution crowning the ruler president for life. Second, the clear separation of powers, so the ruler does not gather legislation, execution, and judiciary in one hand. Third, that the constitution be written by broad national consensus, not by the pens of the ruler’s entourage; for the constitution the victor alone writes becomes the first victim of his defeat.

3. An Independent Judiciary — Guardian of the Contract

No accountability without an independent judiciary — and this is not wisdom but an equation: the ruler who appoints the judges and removes them owns his acquittal in advance. So how is the independent judiciary built? With four institutional guarantees:

First, that appointment be through independent judicial councils, not by solitary presidential decision; and that the judge remain in office until retirement age, not at the mercy of annual renewal. Second, that his salary and benefits not be reduced by executive decision — for the judge who fears for his livelihood rules for the livelihood’s owner. Third, that he not be removed except by a judicial disciplinary court with stringent procedures, not by a letter from the palace. Fourth, the existence of a constitutional court watching laws and decisions and annulling what violates the constitution — as Senegal’s Constitutional Court did in February 2024 when it annulled the decree postponing the elections, saving a whole country’s democracy with a single ruling.

And the picture is completed with an independent public prosecution pursuing corruption wherever it is — even in the palace. And when the judge is the sultan’s employee — as the Shaykh al-Islam was appointed and removed by sultanic will — justice becomes a beautiful décor in a hall justice never enters.

4. Peaceful Rotation of Power — The True Test

Limiting presidential terms and preventing extension are no administrative detail, but the most important safety valve: the ruler who knows his throne is temporary rules cautiously and reckons with the day he departs; and the ruler who guarantees eternal stay turns despotic inevitably — for absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the centuries taught us.

But note the precise standard: the just system is not the one holding elections its ruler always wins, but the one in which the ruler sometimes loses and hands over power peacefully. Peaceful rotation is the true test that cannot be forged: on the second of April 2024 the outgoing Senegalese president stood handing over the reins of rule to a rival who had been his prisoner weeks before — that scene is the just state’s birth certificate, and what every regime raising democracy’s slogans and keeping power forever is incapable of.

And an objector will object: and what of the righteous ruler? Is it not unjust to force the just and competent to depart? And the answer is from history, not from theorizing: if exception were permitted for the righteous, every despot would claim righteousness — and no tyrant in history ever presented himself except as an indispensable savior. Then the righteous today may be corrupted by staying tomorrow; for absolute power is a slow poison no one survives. And institutions — remember — outlive individuals: the truly righteous ruler is the one who builds a system that dispenses with him, not a system impossible without him.

5. Transparency and Freedom of Expression — Accountability Does Not Work in Darkness

Picture that you hired an agent to manage your money, then he barred you from seeing the account statement. Do you accept? So how do peoples accept that their billions be managed in darkness? Accountability does not work in darkness — hence the pillar of transparency:

A budget published item by item, in which the citizen knows where his taxes go; government decisions justified, not taken in closed rooms; mandatory declaration of assets for senior officials before assuming office and after — so that whoever’s wealth suddenly swells is asked: whence did you get this? And above all: a free press criticizing without fear, an opposition working without repression, and a citizen’s legal right to obtain information. For the people who do not know where their money goes cannot hold accountable whoever spends it; and the free press is not the state’s enemy — but the immune system protecting it from corruption’s rot.

6. The Independent Opposition and Civil Society — Accountability’s Second Arm

Elections and judiciary are not enough; for accountability needs pressure forces watching and holding to account — independent parties competing truly for power, free unions defending workers, civic associations watching, a press not drawing its salary from the state, and a public sphere where opinions meet without fear. And as we saw in Chapter Six, despotism’s first target was dismantling every free organization: licensing parties from the authority, rigging unions, taming associations, and mustering rented masses before the cameras.

And a serious system is built on the opposite: legal protection for the party and the association from administrative dissolution; free union elections truly watched; civic associations funded from their members’ subscriptions and donations, not from the state and not from abroad — for the association drawing its budget from the ruler is a tame association, and the one drawing it from a foreign embassy is a suspect association. And as for the press, its true freedom lies in the independence of its ownership: media owned by the state sings the state’s praises, and media owned by the ruler’s oligarchs sings the ruler’s praises, and only media owned by its readers and protected from repression criticizes without fear. With these forces, the ruler finds before him permanent watchers — so he reckons with them even when elections are distant.

7. Fighting Corruption Is Law, Not Slogans

Corruption is despotism’s conjoined twin: the despotic ruler needs money to buy loyalties, and the corrupt network needs despotism to be protected from accountability. So no just state without institutional fighting of corruption: independent audit bodies reporting to parliament, not to the presidency; a declared conflict-of-interest law preventing the minister from ruling for his company and the deputy from legislating for his business; public tenders open to competition, not distributed by favor; and whistleblower protection, so the employee reporting theft is not thrown into the street.

And the international lesson: the difference between the states that rose and those that sank is not in the religion of the people nor in their civilization, but in their handling of corruption. Wherever the big thieves are held accountable as the small, trust is built; and wherever corruption descends from the palace to the street, the law collapses and chaos begins.

The Prophet’s Model Read in the Light of the Twenty-First Century

And here we reach the chapter’s deepest point: that what we propose is no imitation of the West, but a reading of the Prophet’s model in the light of the age. For what did the Prophet’s state rest upon? Three values which the age’s institutions can translate:

First: shura — the decision is not one individual’s. The Qur’an ordered it explicitly: “and whose affairs are determined by consultation among themselves” (al-Shura: 38), and “and consult them in the matter” (Aal Imran: 159). And the Prophet practiced it at Uhud and in the Trench — with people who were not infallible. So what is the modern parliament? It is the institutionalization of shura: shura that was persons’ opinion becomes elected representatives’ vote, and shura that was the Prophet’s optional virtue becomes a system obliging the ruler.

Second: bay’ah — the contract is conditional. The pledge at al-Aqaba was a contract with specific conditions, and Abu Bakr made obedience conditional upon obeying God, and Umar was reviewed in public — “If we see crookedness in you, we will straighten it with our swords,” as a man said to him, and he did not imprison him but thanked him. So what are modern elections? The bay’ah in the age’s language: a conditional contract, renewed periodically, dissolvable at its term’s end — and its non-renewal is the modern form of “removal.”

Third: accountability — the ruler is questioned before the ruled. Umar was asked in public about a garment longer than the Muslims’ garments, and he answered with no anger; and he said: “If I see in one of my governors a deficiency…” So what is the independent judiciary and the free press? The institutionalization of accountability: questioning that was a bold man’s courage becomes everyone’s right, and answering that was the ruler’s virtue becomes his legal obligation.

So the Prophet’s model — read smartly, not literally — gives us the three: shura that was the age’s custom becomes the parliament, and bay’ah that was the handclasp in the Saqifa becomes the ballot box, and accountability that was the people’s boldness becomes the judiciary and the press. The form changes with the age; the essence is one.

And this reading is what saves us from two opposite traps: the trap of literal imitation that wants to restore the seventh century with its form, and the trap of wholesale imitation that sees every Western institution as an alien innovation. The third path: the essence from the heritage, and the mechanism from the age — and this is a fidelity smarter than both literalisms.

And What of the Non-Muslim Citizens?

In the just state, the Muslim and the Christian are equal citizens: no second-class citizens, no “people of the covenant” logic in a modern world whose state rests upon citizenship. And history — note — gave us an early prototype of coexistence: the “Constitution of Medina” organized relations between the Muslims, the Jews, and the tribes in one political document, on the basis of common defense and mutual rights.

And in our age the just state’s citizenship solves the dilemma: the Christian does not fear the Muslim majority because the constitution protects him as the Muslim protects himself — one law for all, and freedom of belief protected as Chapter Seven stated. And the Prophet’s age itself gave the practical lesson: the Christian delegation of Najran prayed in the Prophet’s mosque in Medina — the state’s mosque, in the state’s capital — and none prevented them.

But an objector objects: and the jizya and the provisions of the covenant? The answer: those were rulings for a specific historical age in which non-Muslims did not participate in the state’s army and system, while in the modern state the non-Muslim serves in the army, pays taxes, votes and is elected — so the ruling changes with its reason, as jurisprudence’s rule says: “the ruling revolves with its reason, in existence and non-existence.” Citizenship today is the covenant’s replacement, and equality is the jizya’s replacement.

And What of the Role of Scholars?

After separating religion from the state, scholars do not become marginal: their role remains central in guidance, education, issuing fatwas in worship and transactions, moral reform of society, and defending values. But — and this is the precise line — they remain outside the authority’s institutions: advising, not ruling; guiding, not legislating by force. And the scholar who advises the ruler from outside the palace is mightier and freer than the mufti inside it drawing its salary.

And history testifies to the independent scholar’s might: Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal refused to submit to the caliph’s imposed doctrine and was imprisoned and flogged, but his steadfastness made him the nation’s imam, while the flogging caliphs are remembered only as a dark page. And al-Izz ibn Abd al-Salam stood before the sultans fearing none but God — so the nation immortalized him. The independent scholar is the nation’s conscience; and the employed scholar is the palace’s décor. And the nation that loses its independent scholars loses its moral compass — so protecting scholars’ independence from authority is a condition of the just state, not its enemy.

Answering the Objections

First: Is Not the Problem in Morals, Not Institutions?

An objector says: build the righteous man and the state is reformed, whatever the institutions. And the answer is from the reality we lived: we tried the “righteous man” repeatedly — and the man is changed by the system, or changes the system for the worse. And even if a righteous ruler arrives, who guarantees his successor’s righteousness? And history’s bitterest irony: every despot presented himself as the savior the nation needs, and began with good intentions — then absolute power corrupted him.

And the Prophet himself — contemplate — though infallible, practiced shura and did not monopolize the decision; so what of the fallible? And Umar — though the justest of rulers — was publicly reviewed. Institutions are the true guarantee because they do not depend on hearts’ purity but on mechanisms’ strength: the constitution binds the corrupt and the righteous alike, and the judiciary holds accountable whoever errs, and the elections remove whoever fails. Build the system and you dispense with waiting for the savior; and the savior — if he comes — the system protects him from himself.

Second: Was the West Not Built on Conflict, Not Values?

Another says: these institutions are Western, and their history is colonialism and wars — so why import them? And the answer: we do not import the West’s history, but borrow a mechanism as we borrow technology: the ballot box is like the airplane — a tool, judged by its use, not by its maker’s religion. And the Japanese did not disbelieve when they borrowed the constitution, nor did the Senegalese abandon their Islam when they built their republic. And above all: the essence — shura, bay’ah, accountability — is ours before it is theirs; we only borrow the modern form of our ancient values.

Third: And What of “the Guardianship of the Jurist” and Similar Experiments?

A third says: there are experiments combining religion and the state that claim justice — so why your separation? And the answer: judge by results, not by slogans. Any system granting a religious authority powers above the constitution and above the people’s accountability reproduces the same disease: an unquestionable sanctity, a judiciary and legislation captive to one will, and the impossibility of peaceful removal. The name does not matter — caliph, sultan, supreme guide, or president for life — the standard is one: can the people hold him accountable and remove him? If yes, it is a just system whatever its name; and if no, it is despotism in a sacred garb.

The Conclusion

The just state is built on a simple principle: legitimacy from the people, and on a tested mechanism: institutions that choose, hold accountable, and remove. Shura becomes parliament, the bay’ah becomes the ballot box, and accountability becomes judiciary and a free press — the Prophet’s model’s essence in the twenty-first century’s language.

Fourteen centuries of deviation taught us one lesson: the righteous man does not suffice, and the beautiful slogan does not suffice, and the revolution that topples the tyrant does not suffice. What suffices is the system that makes the ruler’s righteousness unnecessary — because it holds accountable whoever errs and removes whoever is corrupted, regardless of his morals or his slogans.

And this is the book’s answer to the question with which we began: religion is separated from the state so it is not employed, and the state draws its legitimacy from the people so it is not sanctified. A religion free of authority, and an authority subject to law — this is the equation of the coming fourteen centuries.