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IslamQA: Should Muslims boycott the Hajj because of Saudi repression and war crimes?

I've read that when we do hajj we are financially supporting the Saudi government to oppress people in it's country and also to kill people in Yemen. Is it true that they use hajj revenue for bad stuff?

I doubt there is a major country in the world that does not kill innocent people whenever it suits its political goals. Doing business with them or buying products from them always in some way supports them in doing this.

The United States is responsible for the murder of somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million innocent Afghans through staging the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980′s. It is also responsible the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Syrians through its regime change and war-mongering operations. This means that doing any business with the US in some way supports them in doing these things.

And yet there are millions of Muslims living in the US, paying taxes, and in this way supporting the US government.

A government is not a single beast. It is made up of various groups, often conflicting, each working for its own interests. Parts of it does much good, for example the US government and thousands of American charities have saved millions of lives around the world. Technologies developed in the US have helped save millions more lives through making farming more efficient and in this way bringing down the price of food.

We cannot, therefore, treat a government like an individual and make a final judgment on it when it is something very complex and made up of millions of individuals with varying degrees of morality. When American Muslims pay taxes, while supporting the US military, they also support it in taking care of millions of poor people, in doing scientific research and in carrying out various projects for the benefit of humanity.

In return for paying taxes, American Muslims get to enjoy the freedom to practice their religion in a peaceful and prosperous country. This is a great privilege that takes priority over the US government’s immoral actions. While we criticize the government and try to stop its immoral and unethical deeds, we recognize that good that it does, and recognize that living the US and paying taxes is preferable to living in a war zone or in a tyrannical country. There is no such thing as an all-good government, therefore we must operate within the limits of what is possible, enjoining good and forbidding wrong wherever we can.

The same applies to the Saudi government. By going to the Hajj, we carry out an important religious duty, we support the Saudi government in taking care of Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, and we support it in providing welfare for millions of its citizens, while also supporting its oppressive government and its murder of Yemenis.

The Saudi government is also partially responsible for all of America’s wars, because through its petrodollar agreement with the US, it ensures that the US dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, and this enables the US to print trillions of dollars and use it to wage wars without fearing poverty. The Saudi’s have enabled the US to have a free source of cash wherever they need it, and in return they get US weapons and support.

It is a question of whether the good of performing the hajj outweighs the evils of supporting the Saudi government. Most people think that the good outweighs the bad, meaning that performing the Hajj is justifiable even if it in some way supports the Saudi government.

Whenever you do business with anyone who does not have good morals, you support them in doing any immorality they do. But Islam does not prohibit us from doing business with them, because the facts of reality are complicated, and we must do what circumstances require, rather than closing ourselves off and expecting perfection from the world. Tumblr, Facebook and Google are all Jewish-owned companies and all of them support Israel to some degree. Yet we use their services, because we (rightly or wrongly) think that the good of using their services outweighs the vague evil of their support for Israel. Ideally, we’d have alternatives to these services, owned and operated by better people. But realistically, since there are no such services, we cannot give up their services, because the loss we suffer from avoiding these services is greater than any good we do by avoiding their services.

Avoiding these sites is somewhat similar to cutting your house’s electricity because the electricity company’s owner is supports Israel. Will you do so, or will you decide that the good of having electricity outweighs the bad of supporting a company owned by a such a person? Most people will choose to continue to have electricity until there is a better alternative.

Even if you went back 500 or 1000 years, you could still find evil deeds that the rulers of Arabia did that would make you question whether doing the Hajj is justifiable. This is not a new problem.

Muslims are free to boycott the Hajj to shame the Saudi government into behaving better, and perhaps if there was a worldwide boycotting movement, it would do good. But this would require the support of many religious leaders, who at the moment are unlikely to support a boycott, since they believe that performing the obligation of Hajj takes priority over reforming the Saudi government. Maybe if things get much worse they will support a boycott. But at the moment there is little political will to do this.

You are free to try to educate Muslims about the mass murder of Yemenis by the Saudi government (which is largely ignored by the West’s media, since it is done with the full support of the US) and to encourage them to boycott the Hajj. But don’t be surprised if most people prefer to do the Hajj despite Saudi’s actions.

Most of the Saudi government’s revenue is from oil, not Hajj. If your country imports oil from Saudi, like most countries do, and you drive a car or pay to use a taxi, then you are in reality sending money to the Saudi government. If someone is really serious about boycotting Saudi, they should also boycott their oil.

Most people don’t like boycotts because they make life difficult. In Islam, the choice is yours. You can boycott the entities you dislike, or you can continue to do business with them if you have to, while working to make the world a better place in whatever way you can, through enjoining good and forbidding, exposing and criticizing wrong.

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Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago

It is every Muslims duty to stand up against injustice. For those who are silent will surely be silent on the day of reckoning. What the Saudis are doing is un forgiving and worse than what the zionist are doing to our brothers and sisters and children in Gaza. They surely adapted to the heartless zionist killers. It is now long over due that the Muslim world show their disgust in the Saudis coward Actions. If America and all their allies killed Muslims in Iraq in Libya and so on gives us reason to justify what the Saudi child killers are doing in Yemen. We have to boycott the Hajj and Umrah to make a start. All these years the Saudis did not show support for what is happening in Palistine. We cannot say every time leave it in the hands of Allah swt. It is a fard to protect your brother. Please my brothers and sisters let us make a start and stop the mass murders of our people. If the Saudis are stopped then the whole Muslim world will stop because Makkah is the focal point of Islam.

Ayub
Ayub
1 year ago

Asalaam 3laykum wa ra7matullah, i appreciate your work. I think you are intelligent and well read; Allah increase you in beneficial knowledge.

I am not convinced that the good convenience of life can outweigh the evil of voluntarily paying taxes to a regime that spends 19 percent of those taxes to brutalize muslims and humanity. If we use this logic, we can invest in interest to make profits to give to charity, or we can invest in israeli companies to use the profit for good; or we can start a lottery to raise a huge sum for a good cause. Unfortunately this is not acceptable in Islam in my understanding. We do not ascribe to the ends justifying the means.

In a world with choices of domicile, is it true that america offers the only dignified life? Is it true that if we were to make hijrah to a muslim majority community that the evil of those regimes would compare to the crimes of the USA? Are you prepared to conclude all other countries from new zealand to indonesia are wretched uninhabitable places in front of Allah? This is a serious question and deserves serious deliberation. I personally have not found a compelling excuse for avoiding hijrah. There is no “perfect” domicile but there are definite differences in malaysia and the US, or even turkey and the US. Perhaps even a neutral country like new zealand; although you will put your children and grandchildren into perdition by living among the disbelievers. On that subject, can you analyze the authenticity of the hadith about living among the disbelievers and the hadith about the fires not being visible? Jazak Allah 5ayr. Ns’l Allah al 3fiya wal taufeeq.