Living Among People, Belonging to Allah

The reason isolation is not the ordinary course is that enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, al-amr bi al-maʿrūf wa al-nahy ʿan al-munkar, is a dynamic process, and it requires presence among people. A Muslim's life must be lived in the world, not withdrawn from it. Where speech, qawl, fails to move people, conduct, ḥāl, must show them what good looks like: honesty is required, and truthfulness, in keeping with the instruction to declare belief in Allah and then remain upright upon it, qul āmantu billāh thumma-staqim. There is no principle in Islam that permits joining what cannot be overcome, no doing in Rome as the Romans do, no compromising the truth because the surrounding company will not be won over any other way. A Muslim is a person who is righteous, a person who practises the religion he holds; there is no ruhbāniyyah, no monkhood, in Islam, and no retreat to the mountains to live apart from the world altogether.