Arabic → English transcript

They may see the injustice that appears, for example, in a ruler or sovereign, for injustice advances in steps.

It has distances; it also has steps, paces, and spans through which a person progresses.

A person advances through them, and a ruler advances through them.

It is out of the people's mercy toward a ruler and toward the regimes.

That they check that injustice so it does not swell and grow.

For when injustice takes root, uprooting it becomes severe.

So if God Almighty sends down a punishment on a country in that regard,

or a trial, and there are no reformers in the country, then the punishment in that case will be severe.

And if God places reformers in the nation, they halt that wheel of entrenchment.

Thus the injustice in that case is like a peg driven into the ground.

But only its head is sunk in; when it is pulled out it comes away easily and does not affect the ground.

But if it becomes deeply entrenched and someone wants to uproot it,

it can only be uprooted by a single force, and then the whole earth will crack.

And this is similar to injustice when it becomes firmly established.

For this reason many countries in which injustice takes hold and spreads

There are no reformers in it, and if there are reformers, they are negligent.

Or there are self-sacrificing reformers, but they do not fulfill their duty because they are few in number.

And the people do not come to their support.

Therefore the reformers who work to reform and to repel evil

do not want injustice to take hold and become entrenched in the country.

Because God, exalted be He, has a punishment for the spread of oppression on earth.

So if God, exalted be He, sets a period of fifty, sixty, or a hundred years for the oppression to take root,

when He decides to remove it He does so only by a general punishment.

A general punishment because it has become so deeply rooted in the land.

Therefore we say that the peoples must reform.

Scholars must work to reform, primarily as a mercy to the rulers.

A mercy to the sultans, a mercy to the nation.

Perhaps a mercy for future generations, because God’s punishment may not come in the first generation but later on.

For this reason we say that God causes oppression to progress gradually among people.

If they resist and repel it, God, exalted be He, will remove it easily, and there will be no ensuing turmoil.