Motivations include the belief that it is not for Muslim public to question authorities and that they should instead focus on piety, prayer, religious rituals and personal virtue;[1] skepticism that mere mortals can establish a true Islamic government.
[1] Some well known admonitions in Islamic history in support of Quietism from the Quran, hadith, and Islamic scholars include: The saying Similar sayings include Another "commonly cited" but not scriptural sayings among Sunni jurists and theologians that encourage acceptance over resistance include According to Saud al-Sarhan, in medieval times when the power of authorities in the Muslim empire became absolute, quietism was considered a virtue, and a genre of Islamic advice literature (aka Nasihat) arose[1] championing a pragmatic strategy of showing support and obedience to political authority within the realm, while subtly calling for equitable and sound governance.
[1] Al-Sarhan also states that 12th century Persian authorship attempted to combine political activism with recognition of divinely sanctioned absolutism of the caliphs.
[1] Egyptian mufti Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy argued [a] that the traditional Islamic duty of hisbah (forbidding wrong and commanding right) when administered by "the hand" (instead of "by the word" or by silence) in the larger society, was reserved for the authorities.
Wood quotes a Salafi preacher as saying: "The Prophet said: as long as the ruler does not enter into clear kufr [disbelief], give him general obedience," even if he is a sinner.
[4] Wood describes these quietists as believing "Muslims should direct their energies toward perfecting their personal life, including prayer, ritual, and hygiene," rather than jihad and conquest.
His slogan "later in life" was: “the best policy is to stay out of politics.”[23]: 4–5 Today, his students range from Madkhalis—which Olidort describes as the "absolute quietists"—to the violent Ikhwan insurgents that planned and perpetrated the siege of Mecca in 1979.
Khawârij get the idea that the deed is disbelief and (thusly) they revolt, which they said to ‘Alî bin Abî Tâlib... Those you accuse among the Arab and Muslim rulers can be excused.
[25][26] He was a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a highly influential Islamist ideologue,[25][26] and the first to articulate these anathemizing principles in his magnum opus Fī ẓilāl al-Qurʾān (In the shade of the Qurʾān) and his 1966 manifesto Maʿālim fīl-ṭarīq (Milestones), which lead to his execution by the Egyptian government.
[28] However, unlike the early companions, who demarcated reclusion from un-Islamic practices such as monasticism and cleared it from any suggestion of divisiveness, there were those amongst the Sufis who regarded "ascetic seclusion alone as the means of attaining goodness".
Al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (750-869 CE), a Sunni jurist and one of the great early authors of Sufism, discusses a report attributed to the companion and first caliph Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq where the latter defines ‘uzla or retreat in the bodily sense as a synonym for monasticism.
[28] After the death of Muhammad and the assassinations of the rightly guided caliphs, Sufis deemed attempts at perfecting this world useless and thus "took the Qur’anic concept of tawakkul (reliance on God) and developed it into political quietism.
"[28] Javad Nurbakhsh stated: "In Sufi practice, quietism and seclusion – sitting in isolation, occupying oneself day and night in devotions – are condemned."
At least one historian (Jebran Chamieh) argues the Islamic belief that includes what type of government is best and Muslims should establish, is not supported by what is known about the preaching and life of Muhammad.