IF OUR PROTECTORS BECOME BANDITS

Throughout human history, the most basic underpinning enabling societies to live together, escape the maelstrom of chaos and establish a civilized order has been an implicit compact of security and justice. Individuals surrender their own will and some of their freedoms to a shared higher authority so that they can build a peaceful order and look to the future secure in their lives and property. The vast mechanism we call the state arises from precisely this social contract. Yet this transfer has a single condition of legitimacy, valid in every era of history: those who govern must protect those they govern.

A protector, in the profound and encompassing sense at the root of the word, is someone who guards, watches over and shelters others, allowing those in their care to live safely beneath the umbrella of justice. A country’s statesmen derive their legitimacy from this protective mantle on their shoulders and from the measure of justice they provide for their people. Offices and titles are temporary; the peace secured for society endures. Yet power is, by its very nature, savage and ravenous. Unless it is restrained and disciplined by the principles of morality, conscience and law defined by Islam, it can become humankind’s most dangerous and destructive weakness. At this critical breaking point, the protectors who should be society’s greatest refuge and guardians abandon their roles and become the greatest threat history has known: “bandits” who plunder their own people.

The Limits of Entrusted Authority and the Five Essential Necessities

The primary duty of statesmen and administrators is not merely to keep the wheels of bureaucracy turning, collect taxes or make a show of force by imposing bare authority. In longstanding legal philosophy and the Islamic understanding of governance, the sole justification for government is to safeguard people’s rights. The Objectives of Sharia, regarded as the heart of Islamic law, ground the fundamental duty of government in the Five Essential Necessities: five fundamental values that must be protected. These are the safeguarding of life, property, religion, lineage and intellect.

These five fundamental elements are the oxygen of social life. People cannot produce unless their lives are secure, cannot trade unless their property is protected, cannot think while their religion and intellect are under pressure, and cannot ensure a secure future for their descendants. Protectors are the guardians who produce, distribute and preserve this vital oxygen. As long as they uphold justice and put the rule of law before their personal interests or those of their own group, peace, prosperity and trust prevail in society. Standing as a shield before the people against bandits, oppressors and tyrants is the honor, integrity and very purpose of public office. But whenever those in power begin to overstep divine and human boundaries and betray the trust placed in them, this sacred bond breaks, leaving society unable to breathe.

The Danger Within: Intoxication with Power

When bandits who waylay travelers, roam the mountains, recognize neither rights nor law and seize the fruits of people’s labor come from outside, fighting them is relatively easy. The enemy is clear, the battle lines are drawn, and society knows whom it must fight. But the greatest, most insidious and most destructive danger is that those charged with protection—the very people who control the machinery of the state—turn to banditry themselves. This is not a fortress being conquered from within; it is the guards entrusted with defending it plundering the fortress themselves.

A government that abandons justice and turns the law from an impartial set of scales into an instrument of repression used to crush opponents and the weak undermines its own legitimacy. Corrupted by intoxication with power, incompetence and arrogance, this structure no longer shields the people but becomes a vast mechanism of exploitation that covets their assets, labor and future. This period of breakdown, in which those seeking justice are silenced, the cries of the oppressed cannot reach beyond palace walls, and the seizure of rights gradually becomes “normalized,” inflicts irreparable moral and social wounds on society. The worship of power, the pursuit of ill-gotten gains and the urge to get rich quick spread through society like a plague.

The Height of Helplessness: When Salt Itself Rots

When those who should dispense justice and protect the oppressed in a country become the source of injustice and oppression, one of the darkest situations of utter helplessness in human history unfolds. In the words of the sages of old, this is a case of “the salt itself rotting.” Salt is the substance that keeps food from spoiling and decaying. The sole antidote that can prevent moral, economic and legal deterioration in society and hold decay at bay is the justice and law of Islam.

But if corruption has spread to the judge’s robe, the police officer’s baton, the administrator’s pen and the state budget—if the very salt meant to cleanse society has itself rotted—then no human means remain to save that social body. When our protectors become bandits, living conditions for ordinary people do not merely bring material impoverishment; they also become an unbearable burden, impossible to carry spiritually, mentally and morally. A society that loses faith in justice also loses faith in the future, and disintegration becomes inevitable.

Conclusion: Divine Order and True Salvation

Ultimately, the endurance of a state, the survival of a civilization and the peace of a society depend on the uncompromising, principled and just stance its protectors take against bandits. Any system in which power is not balanced by Islamic morality and authority is not constrained by Islamic law is, sooner or later, doomed to become a swamp in which the salt itself rots. A peaceful life that accords with human nature and befits human dignity is possible only in an order where the scales of justice weigh fairly and protectors remain faithful to right and right alone.

Nor must we ever forget that the only ultimate and unshakable refuge for all humanity on earth lies solely in the divine order established by Allah. No one who disregards the boundaries Islam draws between the forbidden and the permissible, placing their own desires above the law, can attain salvation either in this world or in the hereafter. Nor can any power or authority that does not draw upon Allah’s justice and violates the limits He has set establish lasting justice on earth. Salvation lies in submitting to Allah, to whom all dominion belongs, and in properly establishing His justice on earth.

Yakup Döğer

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