The Manner and Injunction of  Participation in Election from the Viewpoint of Political Islamic Fiqh

One of the basic legal political institutions is the institution of ‘election’. Today, this institution is mainly concerned with choosing governors and evaluating people’s acceptance of the political system in different ways. In political literature, the number of elections, the elected high-ranking authorities and the extent to which people can take part in voting indicate both people’s acceptance of the political system and its soft power in the eye of other states.This paper deals with a number of issues relating to election from the viewpoint of political Islamic fiqh, such as the nature of and fiqhi injunction on participation in election and its fiqhi principles. Theoretically, this paper argues that, according to fiqhi viewpoint, the nature of election represents as ‘injunction’, and it is incumbent – by way of imperative or individual duty – on everyone to take part in the elections if certain conditions are fulfilled. This obligatory injunction can take the form of either imperative (individual) duty or collective (sufficient) duty. The basic principles of this Islamic injunction are: necessity of safeguarding the Islamic government, enjoining good and forbidding in certain general instances, necessity of contributing benefaction and piety, necessity of attending to Muslims’ needs and, last but not least, rational proof.