Past eventOther · The Lantern of the Path · Session 58

The Contemporary Codification

Wednesday, 25 February 2026

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Mahdawiyyah, Part 14 · The Shield, Part 4 In 2010, a religious ruling on nuclear weapons was filed as an official document with the United Nations Security Council — not whispered, not implied, but submitted to the permanent record. A message to the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament declared the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons haram — forbidden, in the full technical weight the word carries in Islamic law. Later clarification closed an obvious loophole: if using such a weapon is absolutely forbidden, then building and stockpiling one — preparing for a forbidden act — is forbidden too. Production, storage and use all fall under the same ruling. And the ruling belongs to a category jurisprudence reserves for a small number of judgements: a primary ruling, based on what an act is rather than the circumstances around it, which means no shift in pressure, threat or strategic calculation can lift it. This is exactly why the ruling cannot be strategic prudence — strategic prudence operates through circumstance, and lifts when circumstance changes. A primary ruling does not. The session also tests the ruling against the obvious objections. If other Muslim-majority states have built nuclear arsenals, does that not prove Islamic law permits them? And is the ruling not simply what a state wants the world to hear while quietly building the alternative? Both are answered from the sources rather than by assertion. Can a ruling be an act of concealment when the case for it was built, published, and filed with the United Nations for anyone on earth to inspect? What the evening covers The formal ruling. The precise 2010 wording, its route to the UN Security Council archive, and why the word haram carries binding legal weight. The triad of prohibition. Why the ruling closes production and stockpiling, not only use. Primary and secondary rulings. The jurisprudential distinction that explains why this prohibition cannot be lifted by circumstance. The objections answered. Why another state's nuclear arsenal proves nothing about Islamic law.

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اللَّهُمَّ وَأَنْطِقْنِي بِالْهُدَى، وَأَلْهِمْنِي التَّقْوَى، وَوَفِّقْنِي لِلَّتِي هِيَ أَزْكَى، وَاسْتَعْمِلْنِي بِمَا هُوَأَرْضَى

O God, make my speech be guidance, inspire me with reverential fear, give me success in that which is most pure, and employ me in what is most pleasing to You!

Sahifa Sajjadiyyah, Prayer 20: His Supplication on Noble Moral Traits and Acts Pleasing to God, Verse 17