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“The scholars are the inheritors of the Prophets.”

Yet in every age, some choose to abandon that inheritance, trading divine obligation for state patronage, and truth for stability. The weight of this betrayal becomes more acute in moments of crisis and no moment in our generation has laid bare the bankruptcy of the religious establishment as has the genocide in Gaza.

Over the course of Israel’s recent aggression against the people of Gaza, beginning in October 2023, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of them women and children. The infrastructure of life – hospitals, schools, bakeries, refugee shelters – has been systematically targeted. The siege on food, water, and medicine, combined with deliberate military attacks, has rendered Gaza a scene of unprecedented devastation. Gaza has been entirely wiped out in front of our eyes.

The difference between the scholars of resistance and the scholars of the regime is not one of interpretation. It is one of allegiance.

This campaign of annihilation is not only a humanitarian catastrophe, but an unambiguous violation of international law that has exposed the hollowness of the West’s any remaining claim to moral leadership given their support and political cover for the crimes of their colonial outpost. Indeed, it is questionable that the chimera that was “international law” will survive this event at all, due to how blatantly it has been undermined and exposed as merely a tool in the hands of the powerful to enforce and discard as they please.

In this context, the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) issued its fatwa on October 31, 2023, reiterating the religious obligation of Muslim states and peoples to defend Gaza. It ruled, in the clearest terms, that:

“It is legally incumbent (يتعين شرعاً) upon ruling regimes and official armies to intervene urgently to save Gaza from genocide and destruction” and closed by stating “the abandonment of Gaza and Al-Aqsa is betrayal of God, His Messenger, and the believers, and among the gravest of major sins.”

This was reaffirmed in March 2025 with another fatwa highlighting the obligation of jihad and support for the resistance, both materially and militarily, by all Muslims – especially those in bordering states. (The fatwa has since been supported by the scholars from Indonesia and Pakistan, notably Sh. Taqi Usmani, among others)

Institutional Treachery and the Fiqh of Capitulation

These fatwas were immediately denounced by figures aligned with authoritarian regimes. Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Nazir Ayyad, publicly condemned the IUMS ruling as “irresponsible” and an invitation for chaos, asserting that such declarations can only be made by recognized state authorities.

This came after Yasser Burhami, a leading Salafi cleric and regime loyalist, had stated that the call to jihad was “unrealistic” and contrary to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.

The scholars of the regime have allied themselves with the nation-state, with its borders, treaties, and strategic partnerships. They invoke fiqh only to neuter obligation, to convert jihad into illegal activism, and to criminalize solidarity as sedition. Their invocations of “wisdom” serve only to excuse cowardice.

These responses can hardly be described as valid ijtihad or sincere efforts to find the truth. Rather they were the expression of a juridical philosophy that has come to dominate state-aligned religious discourse: the jurisprudence of submission and capitulation (fiqh al-istislam).

This school, as previously explored in Betrayal of the Inheritance, is rooted in a historical tendency to prioritize unity over justice, often relying on selective readings of certain ahadith.

Yet classical jurists always held that the ruler’s legitimacy was contingent upon their implementation of Islamic law and justice. Authority was not sacrosanct; it was a trust. When that trust was broken – through the abandonment of divine law or complicity in oppression – resistance became not just permissible, but obligatory.

The current manifestation of what was originally a traditionalist view to maintain unity, is a deformed, quietist version of Islam that serves the interests of the enemies of Islam in keeping Muslims disunified and under governments and systems that neither represent Islam nor Muslims. Not content with forbidding internal rebellion, the regime scholars have also been instrumentalised to forbid resistance.

An Islam that not only surrenders al-Quds to the Zionists, but enforces silence while regimes collaborate with and support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, occasionally offering a few words of empty condemnation.

The Tradition of Resistance: A Normative Legacy

Islamic political thought is not silent on the question of resisting tyrants (let alone resisting kufr occupation). Throughout our history scholars and jurists engaged deeply with this question. The early generations of Muslims, including major companions of the Prophet (Ḥusayn ibn ‘Ali, ‘Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr, Talha, al-Zubayr), took up arms against rulers they deemed unjust or acting in an unjust manner. Their actions were not condemned as deviance, but as legitimate expressions of political conscience.

Ibn Hazm, in al-Muhalla, wrote explicitly that removing an oppressive ruler by force was the view of a multitude of companions and early jurists.

Abu Hanifa supported the armed revolts of Zayd ibn ‘Ali and later Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, despite being a non-revolutionary in temperament. His student Abu Yusuf followed in these footsteps.

Imam Malik, despite his caution, issued what was seen as legal justification for rebellion against the Abbasids when pledges of allegiance were made under duress, famously stating: “There is no bay‘a under coercion.” He maintained his position even under torture.

This was not a marginal view. It was central to the Sunni legal tradition until it was sidelined by the consolidation of dynastic rule. Even then, it was never erased, and claims of ijma against rebellion are easily falsified.

Rebellion, as a legal category, was bound to criteria: the legitimacy of the ruler, their implementation of justice, and a realistic assessment of the consequences. But when the basic conditions of governance were violated – when rulers protected enemies, persecuted the pious, and abandoned the Ummah’s sanctities – then standing down is not patience. It is cowardice.

As for forbidding resistance, this innovated deen promoted by the regimes and the scholars that are instrumentalised by them is an even more grotesque deformation of Islam.

The Caliphate and the Absence of Authority

The disintegration of the caliphate in 1924 marked a profound rupture in the political unity and legal authority of the Ummah. In its absence, the fragmented Muslim world became increasingly ruled by regimes born of colonial complicity, sustained by military power and foreign backing, and legitimized by co-opted religious institutions.

Today’s muftis of the state do not speak from within a legitimate polity implementing divine law. The regime rulers are not caliphs nor appointed by shura or through the general agreement and consent of the ummah. The state sponsored religious clergy serve presidents and generals who trade al-Quds for recognition and Gaza for gas deals and El Al tourism. Their religious pronouncements do not bind the Ummah. Rather, they seek to bind the Ummah’s anger, to pacify its resistance.

This is why the IUMS’s fatwa is noteworthy. It reclaims the authority of Shariah from the palace and regime scholars and returns it to the global conscience of the Ummah. It affirms that resistance is not a political slogan – it is a divine command. We need more of our scholars to adopt this stand, and to promote it, and to hold our armies and rulers to account for their treachery (as opposed to the disgraceful stance by some Western Muslims cosplaying as sincere advisors denouncing such stands as “virtue signalling”)

Between Prophetic Inheritance and Palace Islam

The difference between the scholars of resistance and the scholars of the regime is not one of interpretation. It is one of allegiance.

The scholars of the regime cannot be seen as credible Islamic scholars for they have allied themselves with the nation-state, with its borders, treaties, and strategic partnerships. They invoke fiqh only to neuter obligation, to convert jihad into illegal activism, and to criminalize solidarity as sedition. Their invocations of “wisdom” serve only to excuse cowardice.

The scholars of resistance, as represented in this case by the IUMS, operate within a different paradigm and are closer to the integrity of the classical tradition. Their allegiance is to the Ummah as a whole, and to the divine command which transcends regimes. They understand that silence in the face of injustice is itself a crime. That neutrality amidst genocide is not a middle path, but complicity.

The events in Gaza have drawn a clear line: between a jurisprudence that reflects the prophetic mission of justice and a jurisprudence that mirrors the interests of tyrants. Between scholars who issue fatāwā to empower the Ummah and those who silence it. Between inheritance, and betrayal.

History remembers those who fulfilled the trust of knowledge. And the noble Angels record, in precise detail those who abandoned it.

“The master of the martyrs is Hamza ibn Abdul Mattalib, and a man who stands (in front of) an oppressive ruler and enjoins the good and forbids the evil and so is killed for it”

Dr. Reza Pankhurst is the author of The Inevitable Caliphate (Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Untold History of the Liberation Party (C Hurst & Co, 2016)