On October 29, a Saudi Islamic preacher, Assim Al-Hakeem, while quoting a question asked by his follower, has said that Muslims are not allowed to join the Indian Air Force as pilot. Though he did not explain the reason, his followers quoted Quran and said Allah forbids Muslims from ‘helping the non-believers’.
A Twitter user Halal Maguire had tagged the preacher and asked, “Can we join Indian Air Force as a pilot?”.
Replying to the question, in a quoted Twitter, the preacher said, “This is not permissible”.
As he did not explain why Muslims cannot join Indian Air Force as a pilot, some Twitter users asked in the reply section to provide a reason for the same.
A Twitter user H_1_N_D quoted Assim’s tweet and explained why it is not ‘permissible’ for Muslims to join the Indian Air Force. He quoted verse 4:76 of An-Nisa, chapter four of the holy book that roughly translates to, “Those who have faith fight in the way of Allah, while those who disbelieve fight in the way of Satan. Fight, then, against the fellows of Satan. Surely Satan’s strategy is weak.”
According to the website IslamicStudies, the verse lays down the verdict of Allah that a devout Muslim should fight in the cause of Allah to establish his religion on the earth. It also talks about fighting against the ‘non-believers’, who, according to the verse, are Satan’s comrades-in-arms.
Who is Assim Al-Haleem?
Assim Al-Hakeem is one of the prominent leaders of the Islamic world. Hailing from Saudi Arabia, he conducts Islamic programmes in both Arabic and English for TV and radio. He claims to teach the authentic sayings of the Quran and the Hadiths and often appears on Huda TV and Zakir Naik’s Peace TV. He holds a BA in Linguistics from King Abdul Aziz University and a diploma in Islamic Studies from Umm al-Qura University. He has been working as an Imam at a Jeddah mosque for the last 20 years.
He has a long history of connection with controversies. In October itself, he suggested a man divorce his wife because she celebrated the Hindu festival Navratri. In June last year, he had claimed that protesting is ‘haram in Islam. In 2018, he claimed bitcoin and cryptocurrency are ambiguous and haram under Islamic law as it was being used to buy drugs and money laundering.