appointing them to important governmental positions and providing them with the necessary resources to promote their deviant and anti-Islamic beliefs, so that, with their false narrations, they would mislead Muslims and turn them into slaves at the service of oppressive rulers!

[The Permissibility to Rise Against Oppressive Rulers]

Even now, some survivors of those who consider themselves Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jama‘ah have given oppressive rulers power over Islamic lands, believing that obeying and protecting them is their Islamic obligation, to the point where in every Islamic land, a tyrannical dictator rules and spends the wealth, lives, and honor of Muslims on his own ambitions, while no one among them dares to oppose him or recognizes any right for himself to confront him, to the extent that the most tyrannical and corrupt governments are in Islamic lands, and the oppression that exists among Muslims does not exist among disbelievers! Meanwhile, if a Muslim, like a rare gem, is found who opposes such a ruler and intends to confront his oppression, the ruler declares him a disbeliever before anything else, so that opposing him becomes permissible for Muslims and confronting his oppression becomes lawful for them; because, relying on a wahid and uncertain report, he claims that rising against an oppressive ruler is forbidden and considered as separation from the community of Muslims, unless manifest disbelief is seen from him![1] However, as a rule, the ruler’s oppression—no matter how severe—does not necessitate his disbelief, and as long as he declares the Shahada[2], manifest disbelief is not seen from him; because manifest disbelief is the denial of Allah, His Prophet, the Day of judgment, or essentials such as prayer and fasting, and the disbelief of one who acknowledges these is not manifest, even if it can be inferred. Therefore, rising against a Muslim ruler under the pretext that he has committed manifest disbelief is not justified; rather, the only thing that permits rising against him is his oppression of Muslims;