Abdessalam Yassine
December 10, 2025
Tr. Yassine Hicham
The word minhāj[1][Guiding Way] follows the Arabic morphological pattern mif‹āl, a form often used to designate instrumental nouns, as in miftāḥ [key]; yet it can also denote a verbalnoun, as in mi‹rāj [ascending ladder], or a place-name, as in mirṣād [watchtower]. Linguistically, the root conveys both wayfaring and clarity[2]. The great lexicographer ar-Rāghib al-Aṣfahānī explains: “The nahj is the clear road. To nahaja a matter or anhaja means to make it manifest. From it comes manhaj and minhāj—a clear way to be followed.”
From these linguistic roots, and drawing on Ibn ‹Abbās’s definition of minhaj as the Sunna, we grasp its true function: clarity and guidance that beget wayfaring, all in accordance with the Way [sunna] of the Messenger of God (may God bless him and grant him peace). It is therefore both an instrument for knowledge and a guide for action; at once the very substance of that knowledge and the blueprint for that action. In the Prophetic Guiding Way, the instrument for knowledge and illumination cannot be severed from the scholarly and practical substance, for it is the path itself.
Adherents of secular ideologies distinguish between method and doctrine[3]. Dialectical materialism, for instance, is Marxism’s method, while the Marxist doctrine—with its materialist and class-based teachings, its demands for movement, change, and struggle, and its historical-economic analysis underpinning the whole—stands apart from the method, even though the dialectical method animates it, just as soul animates the body.
The Prophetic Minhāj, by contrast, is an indivisible whole: the Prophetic Sunna is a path to be walked, and the call to God Almighty, along with the faith-filled response to it are one seamless whole in the believer’s heart, mind, and movement. Whoever reads the Qur›ān merely for curiosity without answering its summons through practice and obedience, or studies the Sunna without embodying it in conduct, is not walking the Straight Path[4]—nor can he be said to abide by the Prophetic Minhāj.
The function of the Prophetic Minhāj is to bind knowledge and action together, call and response as one, mercy and wisdom in mutual support. It is a divine command and an act of obedience, a plan and its execution in unison. Anything less is hypocrisy—the hypocrisy of those who say what they do not do.
For the believer, then, the Prophetic Minhāj holds the same importance as ideology does for the partisan among others, performing the same function. Its strategic significance—clarifying, planning, coordinating, and executing—renders practical knowledge, in Sayyid Quṭb’s[5] words, “a matter of life and death”: hearing God’s command with the intent to enact it.
The term strategy is military in origin, yet it has seeped into political discourse now that political struggle—whether class-based or interest-driven—demands the same life-or-death resolve as warfare. Strategy is “the art of directing and coordinating military efforts alongside political, economic, and moral endeavors to wage war or mount a defense.”
Such is the function of the Minhāj: to direct and harmonize the struggles of the believer towards clear objectives, along an exemplary path. There is also tactics—another military term—signifying “the partial, operational aspect of a given strategy.”
These terms have become part of a global lexicon. No one engaged with the movements and cultures of our age can afford not to understand them, for they will encounter them, in victory or defeat, in a contest that is, in the end, a question of life or death.
[1] [TN:] This passage distinguishes between secular methodologies (which separate method from content) and the Prophetic Minhāj (which integrates divine guidance, practical methodology, and lived implementation). Imam Yassine argues that unlike ideological systems where method and doctrine can be analyzed separately, the Prophetic Minhāj demands that knowledge immediately translate into action and spiritual transformation. The military terminology (strategy, tactics) reflects the author’s view that Islamic revival requires the same level of systematic planning and coordinated effort as warfare, but grounded in Prophetic guidance rather than purely human calculation. This represents a comprehensive approach to social change that integrates spiritual development with practical organization.
[2] [TN:] Imam Yassine emphasizes the linguistic origins of Minhāj from the Arabic root n-h-j, which conveys the idea of a clear, open, and easy-to-follow path. This establishes the Minhāj not as a complex or obscure philosophy, but as a practical and divinely clarified Way of life.
[3] [TN:] Method versus doctrine distinguishes the procedural framework from the substantive beliefs upheld by an ideology.
[4] [TN:] Ṣirāṭ al-Mustaqīm: “The Straight Path,” a Qur›ānic phrase (e.g., 1:6) symbolizing the true, unerring way of divine Guidance. To stray from it is to invite spiritual ruin.
[5] [TN:] Sayyid Quṭb (1906-1966): A highly influential Egyptian author, Qur›ānic commentator, and intellectual associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. His writings, which call for a comprehensive return to the Qur›ān and the rejection of all non-Islamic systems (which he termed modern Jāhiliya, or Ignorance), have shaped Islamic revivalist movements across the globe. He was executed by the Egyptian state in 1966, and many of his admirers, including the author, refer to him as a martyr (shahīd).
