part 2

Does emigration to non-Muslim countries represent a negative issue for Muslim generally, from the Islamic moral point to view, conceptually?

Does Islam want Muslim to shrink back inside their own countries to preserve the original nature of their concepts, the firmness in their belief and the correctness of their conduct? Thus (by extension) not allowing them to emigration to infidel lands would preserve them from deviation and going astray; hence is the movement in Islamic reality to be fond only in the interior, not in the exterior?

We must study the Islamic text that deals with the emigration question; we read the saying of the Most High: 'And whosoever emigrates in the way of Allah, shall find numerous places of refuge in the land and great abundance; and he that leave his dwelling and emigrates in the way of Allah and His Messenger and is then overtaken by death, shall be rewarded by Allah; and Allah is forgiving and Merciful.' 4:100.

The Qur'an presents the concept of emigration in the way of God', which places the matter in the circle of the Islamic plan for confronting the challenge. This is on the basis that emigration may provide the challenge. This is on the basis that emigration may provide a person with a lot of positive opportunities in the fields of knowledge to free him from the cruel pressures of the infidel and arrogant forces that overwhelm the Muslim, leading him astray from the way of God – in intellectual or behavioral ways – and separate him from the right path, or make him succumb to the will that pressurizes him, so that it crushed the will of the Muslim to counter its influence in any vital matter that relates to the vital causes.

This is what we can conclude from the verse that precedes this verse when talking about the oppressed people who fall under the influence of the intellectual pressure of the arrogant infidel forces, through the very real compulsion to succumb to their will. This is His saying: "The angels will ask those whom they carry off while steeped in sin: "What were you doing?" We were oppressed in the land, they will reply; they will say: "Was not the earth of Allah spacious enough for you to emigrate?" Hell shall be their home – a bas fate. Except those who are (really) weak and oppressed – men, women and children, who have no means in their power, nor (a guide) to direct their way.' 4:97,98.

We note that in both verses these oppressed people, who submitted to the deviant influences on their belief that were imposed on them by strong infidels, saw that their weakness as justification for submitting to the infidel pressure, because they did not have the force to challenge and oppose owing to an imbalance of power between them and the others. However, the verse said to them that the matter is not a closed tunnel in which they had no chance of alleviating the pressure, because if they had no strength in their positions at home there was more than one emigration opportunity to escape the pressure, and hence to fine more than one chance to acquire new strength to confront the situation with firmness and to face the arena of challenge from a new position.

Therefore, the weak person who has an opportunity to reach to positions of strength has no (Islamic) legal justification to succumb to arrogant, infidel pressures. This puts him in the position of confronting the negative consequences before God the Most High and his responsibilities towards Him.