A brother recently brought up the issue of covenants of safety issued to Kuffar in Muslim lands granting them protection, and prohibiting hostility towards them or against their property.
How can it be permissible to target multinational corporations and foreign investments, if they are operating under a covenant of safety?
There is a prevalent opinion that modern travel visas equate to Shari’ah covenants of safety; I don’t necessarily agree with this opinion, but let’s accept it for the sake of discussion.
The first question here, it seems to me, should be with regard to the validity of this covenant, given the fact that there is little choice on the part of the state to refuse issuing it.
Citizens of the US, the European Union, Canada, Australia, Russia, and others, are all granted visas immediately upon arrival in Egypt. This is so because, quite frankly, Egypt is in no position to refuse. It is not a covenant granted voluntarily. This alone is sufficient to nullify its validity.
It is, essentially, a covenant being granted to the Kuffar by the Kuffar, rubberstamped by the regime they control.
The next obvious issue is that visas issued upon arrival do not constitute a mutual agreement; the recipient of the visa makes no declaration of peaceful intent, he does not have to pledge to obey the law, does not have to promise non-hostility, and does not have to meet any conditions whatsoever.
If this is the case, the granting of safety includes no restrictions on the visa-holder’s behavior; essentially, it promises safety for him unconditionally, and of course, this is unacceptable.
Furthermore, if we are going to accept that visas constitute the updated version of Shari’ah covenants of safety, we must consequently update our definitions of what constitutes hostility and aggression.
A multinational or a foreign investor doing business in Egypt is there explicitly to plunder the nation’s resources and to exploit the workforce. He is there to undermine the domestic economy and create dependence and debt.
Is he eligible for safety simply because he is clever enough to call slavery “employment”, or because he sabotages local business and industry under the banner of “market liberalization”?
No. This is aggression, it is colonization, it is imperialism. They are soldiers in an economic crusade to invade, occupy, and enslave the Muslim world. Holding a visa does not grant them the right to pursue this predatory agenda without consequences