The Command Belongs Only to Allah

And then he said: in al-ḥukmu illā lillāh — the command is for none but Allah. All governance, all rule and all command belong to Allah (swt), in all of our affairs, in everything.

We need to realise that we are following an incomplete form of Islam today. We are following a brand of Islam that is missing the Sharīʿah. The Sharīʿah is left out. We follow a certain aspect of Islam — the daily rituals of ʿibādah, some things we do in the masjid, and a very little akhlāq — and that is it. We are missing the Sharīʿah, the law of Allah (swt); we are missing important akhlāq; we are missing the way of dealing in business; we are missing all of this. And if we have no intention of bringing it back, and if we do not strive and struggle to do so, then we are guilty of following an incomplete form of Islam. The only excuse we would have before Allah (swt) is if we strive and struggle to bring back the complete form of Islam. If we do that, then we hope that Allah (swt) will forgive us for this shortcoming.

Yūsuf was saying: all command belongs to Allah. Do we follow the commandments of Allah in business? Do we follow the commandments of Allah in criminal law? Do we follow the commandments of Allah in international law? Do we follow the commandments of Allah in politics? In economics? In social law? If we leave all of these aside, what are we following?

And then Yūsuf told them the justification for why rule should belong to Allah: He has commanded that you worship none but Him. So this is part of worship. The reason ḥukm should belong to Allah is that it is part of worship. And if we are not worshipping Allah in the laws of social life, and in politics and economics, then we are taking other gods besides Allah.

That is why, when ʿAdī ibn Ḥātim walked in, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) saw a cross hanging on his chest, and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said:

They have taken their priests and their rabbis as gods besides Allah. ʿAdī ibn Ḥātim said: no, we do not worship our priests. He was a Christian, with the cross hanging on his chest. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: did your priests not make the ḥalāl ḥarām and the ḥarām ḥalāl? He said yes. He said: that is worshipping them. If you give a human being the authority to say that the ḥalāl is ḥarām and the ḥarām is ḥalāl, you have taken him as a god besides Allah.

And that is what we have done in many aspects of our lives. In fact, in the major portion of our lives, we have given the authority to man and taken it away from Allah (swt). So Yūsuf told them: the command belongs to Allah, and Allah has commanded you to worship none but Him. That is the right religion — that is the true religion. If we want the true religion, that is the true religion. But most people do not know.