Al-Qalam 
By Ebrahim Rasool (Former Ambassador to the USA)
In 2024, in France, the Ultra-Right Supremacists led by Marine le Pen, came through two rounds of Presidential elections and won a hung Parliament after threatening to take the leadership of France to implement her supremacist agenda against foreigners, Muslims, blacks, and others in her targeted bigotry. As part of efforts to stop her, the Mufti of France convened the Muslim leadership in the Grand Mosque of Paris and emerged with an edict for Muslims to choose the lesser of two harms (co-existing with ‘odious’ lifestyles and ideologies) rather than allowing or choosing the existential harm to Muslims from le Pen’s National Rally.
That same year, without similar guidance, American and UK Muslims fragmented their votes and were instrumental in Trump’s regaining power and prosecuting his supremacist agenda in the USA and globally. In the case of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, it was clear that he did not necessarily need the Muslim vote anymore and could promulgate policies without considering Muslims.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, Muslims by and large, turned their back on the ANC (which failed the tests of trust and competency), helping to reduce the ANC to 40% and force it into a coalition with the very parties that opposed the ANC charging Israel with genocide in the ICJ.
The year 2026 is another year of significant elections. In South Africa, the Muslim exodus from the ANC continued, helping to reduce it to 30% and heightening the prospect of Zionist-funded parties stymying the charges against Israel. In the Israeli election, on the other hand, Arab/Muslim parties first consolidated themselves into 2 blocs, and now hold the balance of power (19 seats in the Knesset) between Netanyahu’s bloc and the Eisenkot bloc, and with no one able to govern, the Arab/Muslim bloc has said that while Eisenkot remains odious, he constitutes the lesser harm and Netanyahu the greater one.
In the USA, this time the Muslim vote did two things – they consolidated behind the Democrats in an ‘Anyone But Trump’ vote, and they put up progressive Muslim and other candidates on a progressive platform that included influencing the Democratic leadership, ending the war on Iran, defunding Israel, and making life affordable.
The puzzle is how did South African Muslims, that taught the Muslim minority world this kind of jurisprudence of worldly engagement, move from political coherence to fragmentation, while the rest of the Muslim minority world today are more favourably positioned?
What is this jurisprudence of elections?
Firstly, the Quran (2:216) understands human reluctance to do things (like fighting) but establishes the fundamental fountainhead of choices: “…it is possible that you dislike that which is good for you, and love that which is bad…”. This is crucial for doing the counter instinctive to your fears, prejudices, and interests.
Secondly, the key to choices is whether we will place ourselves in a position of sustainable ease or difficulty (Quran 2:185) because that which seems easy immediately may bring long-term harm or vice versa. So, one may absorb immediate difficulty to create long-term ease. The Prophet (S) postpones the umrah (minor pilgrimage) at Hudaibiyah in pursuit of the greater goal of conquering and pacifying Mecca.
Thirdly, the foundation of complex decision-making is the Prophetic principle (Sunan Imam Majah – 2341). “Do not cause harm, nor reciprocate harm …”. Harm must be prevented for yourself, your family, your community, the Ummah, and humanity. If there’s a possibility that your decision could cause harm, then the rest of the Prophetic tradition applies: whoever harms people, harms Allah, and whoever causes hardship to people, calls out Allah’s reciprocation. Preventing harm can outweigh the doing of good.
Fourthly, scholarship then establishes the principle that when a Muslim is faced with two fiendishly harmful choices: “Choose the lesser of two harms”. What will cause less harm? Khidr in Surah Kahf (The Cave) exercises this principle when rather sinking the boat (and therefore, the livelihood) of a fisher versus allowing the boat to be harnessed by a tyrant for oppression. The Prophet (S) allows the Bedouin to urinate in the mosque rather than a greater harm emanating from forcibly stopping him.
Fifthly, out of these fundamentals, a set of maxims arise, creating a methodology of decision-making for life, but especially for a political jurisprudence. A greater injury is prevented (the genocide in Palestine) by enduring a lesser injury (potholes in your suburbs). A violation of a shariah-intent of necessity (related to harm to life, dignity, justice, etc.) overrides a violation of an intent of personal need or adornment; and finally, it is better to endure a private harm(deficient services) in order to prevent a public harm (the war on Iran).
American Muslims, in pursuing this approach to the fiqh of worldly engagement, have emulated the finest examples of SA Muslims in the battle against apartheid and in the transition to a democratic society. They got into the fight. They allied with anti-Zionist Jews, Christian pastors, democratic socialists, liberal whites, as well as Hispanic, African American and indigenous Americans to defeat Donald Trump and impede his supremacism. This was the greater global harm they prevented. They can now begin to sort out the myriads of lesser harms.
*Ebrahim Rasool is the former ambassador to the U.S. and former premier of the Western Cape
