Islam is a system for human life which is based on making God’s law alone govern in all situations of life. Furthermore, Islam – which takes charge of organising all human life – didn’t deal with life’s different aspects haphazardly nor did it treat it as various parts. That is to say, it has an integrated, complete conception about divinity, existence, life and the human being.
Those preachers of Islam who want to adopt Western methods of thinking accept defeat when they try to renew their lives by adopting Western ways of thinking, living and conduct. This leads them to bury alive the life which they are working to revive because, from the very first moment, they depart from their unique natural way: thinking that is based on Islamic fundamentals that make the moral element deep-rooted in building life and that look at the moral goals of society, but that [also] don’t make benefit the supreme goal for morals. That is to say, Islam actualises all good goals of life while preserving the moral element in it. Its greatest dynamic value lies in that it doesn’t compartmentalise life, nor does it separate the means from the goals. Likewise, it doesn’t prescribe conflict between the material and the spiritual in the entity of life, nor in the nature of the cosmos and the human being; rather, it prescribes that life is a whole unit which travels in its entirety towards the goals compatibly and harmoniously.
Consultation is the Islamic philosophy of governance in the Muslim state, and it is likewise the Islamic philosophy of the Muslim society and of the Muslim family. Islam’s stance towards consultation didn’t stop at the point of considering it [to be] one of the human rights, rather it went to the point of making consultation an obligatory religious ordinance on the entire Muslim community – rulers and subjects – in the state, in society, in the family and in various modes of human conduct. As for the method of consultation, Islam didn’t set a specific system for it, but [rather] left the complete right and full freedom for the Muslim community in devising and inventing systems, organisations, ways and means that bring the goals and objectives of consultation close to action and offering when they are applied and put into practice.
Islam’s policy of governance exists after acceptance of the necessity of consultation between the ruler and the subject; [it exists] on the basis of justice from the rulers and obedience from the subjects. [The notion of] justice in Islamic law, therefore, is an obligatory ordinance and isn’t merely one of the rights that the person holding them is able to waive whenever they want or neglect without bearing the responsibility and [incurring] sin. As for obedience of the subjects, it means to determine [judiciously] when and when not to hear, and likewise to give obedience, together with establishing the Book of God the Exalted; thus, obedience to the ruler’s commands is not unconditional and absolute, nor should [one] persist in obedience even if the ruler was to forsake the law of God and His Messenger.
