The title of Amir al-mu’minin has no jurisprudential justification and the Taliban do not have the required knowledge to justify their supreme leader’s title.
Amir al-mu’minin means the ruler of all believers on earth. Political terminology for Muslims developed during the first three to four centuries of Islamic empire expansion. The terms such as caliph, the amir of the believers, imam, sultan and king were part of this terminology. In the history of Islam, the Amir al-Mu’minin was said to be the only person who was considered the highest political authority in the entire Islamic world. Historically, the term was used for the Umayyad, Abbasid, and some Ottoman sultans, and other powerful kings and amirs of Islam, such as Ismail Samani, Mahmud of Ghazni, the Seljuk king Al-Arsalan, Salahuddin Ayoubi, and others. Despite, their brilliant names and great power, they officially refused to accept the title of Amir al-Mu’minin for themselves.
The term Amir al-Mu’minin did not appear in religious texts, and the books now known as political jurisprudence and in the past as al-Ahkam al-Sultaniya did not discuss this. But the custom accepted throughout the history of Islam was that the title should be used for the one who was being accepted by the majority of the people and followers as prince of princes and kings. Apparently, it was not legally permissible for two Amir al-Mu’minins to claim the title at the same time. According to a statement attributed to the Prophet of Islam; whenever, one swears allegiance to two caliphs at the same time, the second person must be killed. Among the Muslims, the Amir al-Mu’minin held the position of emperor in the great expansionist regimes of the past, under which sub-ordinate local rulers and kings ruled in various territories.
The Taliban rebesl now call their hidden leader as the Amir al-Mu’minin, the ruler of all the believers in the world, and although this is not the case in practice and he is the ruler of a barbarian group in one of the most backward countries in the world.. The desire to form a vast and powerful empire in the name of Islam has long had its lovers in Muslim countries and from the time of the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate until today, sometimes the King of Egypt, sometimes King Hashemi of Hejaz, later Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan and the exporters of the Islamic revolution in Iran, everyone has been trying to build such a title for themselves.
The end result of such a tendency and approach is the formation of religious tyranny, interference of the religion to politics,, more reliance on extremist and terrorist groups, more alliances with the intelligence of different countries, more widespread repression of citizens, more ideological delusions and wasted opportunities. National facilities and resources are being miss-used under these baseless and vague titles and ideologies. This is all apart from other objections to this title; Such as the lack of a mechanism to monitor the performance of the Amir al-Mu’minin, the lack of a mechanism to curb his powers, the lack of transparency in the decision-making process, and the lack of an accountability that leads to a total destructive authoritarianism. A name must be chosen for the leader of a system that shows that his removal and installation by the people and its legitimacy stems from the peoples’ will.