This is an excellent opportunity to unify the Muslims in the UK, and give them a clear direction to use their voting power – at the least, this will mean increase politicisation of the Muslims, which will not only help our cause but also the cause of Islam.
(Yusuf) I was surprised that the Islamic view on participation in the UK elections was not raised in this article, especially since that is the basis for HT’s opposition to voting.
I would be interested to know the following:
1) Which party do you feel would best secure the interests/identity of the Muslims?
2) What do you suggest should be the programme Muslims should adopt in order to move us forward as a community?
3) You said you changed your mind on voting, which scholars do you follow that convinced you of this stronger opinion.
(Yamin) The Islamic view was given in the first three to four paragraphs in the article. I said clearly, there is IKHTILAF on this issue. Many prominent scholars permit voting, and many prohibiting it.
1) Your question shows your incorrect PARTYSAN mindset, thus it is singular “which party”. The interest/identity of the Muslims will be best secured by a collective effort; I believe those who actually do the hard work of practically leading by example are the ones we should follow. Do not get me wrong, HTB also has a role to play, but they need to find that space to fit into the rest of the Muslim community.
2) This is another issue; we are only discussing here the issue of voting. There are many needs and we need to work collectively and not promote the idea that wait for the Khilafah – until then no charity, no jihad, no schools, no Masjids etc. I know you have altered your position in recent times but that is another issue.
3) I do not really need to refer to a scholar for this issue. I became convinced by applying my own thought process to this subject and looking at the arguments. In terms of scholars, there are numerous prominent ones, who permit voting. Look here for some example, http://www.islamicforumeurope.com/images_uploaded/2010/04/img3205.pdf
(Yusuf) By party, I mean Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem? How is that partisanship?
As for number 2), you first claim that we say everything should stop until the khilafah is established, and then you say but we’ve changed from that view. Which means you are aware this is inaccurate, yet you still advance that claim, this is disingenuous in the extreme. All you needed was to clarify an accuracy you were aware of, instead you used an inaccurate statement to advance your argument, that is cheap. I do not believe everything should stop until the khilafah comes, but the actions we do need to be restricted by the ahkaam shar’iah.
Please feel free to explain why you think voting is allowed. I would recommend first reading:
The Obscenity of the UK General Election
http://www.mail-archive.com/
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Ruling By Kuffr is Haram
http://islamicsystem.blogspot.com/2007/08/ruling-by-kufr-is-haraam-by-prof.html
(Yamin) I thought you were referring to Islamic parties, ok. I would say there is no single party that caters for the Muslim interest; I would not expect that being a minority. You have to look at case by case. For me people like Jeremy Corbyn, John Reece, Tony Ben, George Galloway, Salma Yaqub, Jenny Tongue, Abjol Miah, etc are all good candidates for the Muslims. They may not be perfect and give you everything that you want, but you need to understand we live in a non-Muslim country.
We agree on what objectives are to be sought for the Muslims in the UK in general.
As for why I think voting is allowed, because I am of the opinion it is not prohibited. Note the following points which have already been mentioned.
- We agree that, we can seek our rights in the non-Islamic courts thus we have an obligation to ensure these rights are not eroded. For this we need to have influence in the legislative body.
- As law abiding citizens have already endorsed the system of legislation. This is the basis of the contract and not voting.
- If the UK becomes a predominantly Muslim society – much of this would become redundant and the verses demanding to rule by Islam would then become applicable.