Unless you actively practise enjoining the good and forbidding the evil you are not practising your Islam to the full! You may say to me that you have no strength to do so either by word or by deed and thus you only abhor the trials of the Muslim Ummah in your heart. I say to you that in such a case you are a hypocrite or an ignorant one who needs education! Know then that in the societies of Western Europe and the North America you will not be punished for speaking the truth no expressing your opinions in a lawful manner through demonstrations, picketing, lobbying, voting intelligently, letter writing and speeches, educational debates and a myriad of other political activities. All of these are actions that are available to you and you can do this without fear for your life, your liberty or your property. All it takes is effort on your part. Now you are no longer ignorant. Know then that if you refrain from doing this then you are a hypocrite and your supplications will not be answered by God as related in the hadith quoted above, for if you do nothing to help your brother in Palestine or your sister in Iraq or your mother in Chechnya, then your supplication to God is mere hypocrisy and God hates the hypocrites!
And if say that you are prevented from action through fear of what other would say about you or what your neighbours and community would think about you, I would say to you “Awake, my brother or sister, and protect your soul!”. Fear God and not the people, for it is God that will take you to account and hand out judgement. If you are prevented from doing what God has commanded you to do by your fear of people’s reaction then this is the beginning of shirk and the road to the Hellfire. Perhaps the advice of Luqman the Sage to his son will be of help to you in this situation, for he said: “O my son! Establish regular prayer, enjoin what is just and forbid what is wrong, and bear with patient constancy whatever happens to you; for this is firmness of purpose in the conduct of affairs.” [31:17] It is implicit in this advice, which God has brought to our knowledge through the Glorious Qur’an, that enjoining the good and forbidding the evil will cause those who are devious, forsaken and hate the way of God to cause difficulty for the practising believer, yet if you are firm in purpose, God will not suffer the reward of the righteous to perish [7:170].
And if you say to me that political activity will threaten community cohesion, I will say to you that this is a fallacious argument and was the argument of the Jews in the Nazi Germany as the regime turned against them and slaughtered them by the millions. Nobody will stand up to protect you and yours until you stand up yourself and encourage and motivate others to stand with you.
If you say to me that one should first learn the basics of Islam before proceeding to enjoin the good and forbid the evil, I will say to you that you should seek knowledge before making such misguided statements since enjoining good and forbidding evil is one of the basics of Islam as is clear from the verses of the Glorious Qur’an quoted above.
And if you say to me that there is nothing that can be done in terms of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil until such time as the Islamic State is established, I will say to you that you are a fool and a disbeliever in God’s promise to Muslims for God in His Everlasting Glory has promised those of you who believe and do good deeds that He will most surely make them to succeed the present rulers in the earth as He made their ancestors before them, and that He will establish for them their religion, the one which He has chosen for them, and that He will change their present state of fear into peace and security. [24:55] Thus, working for the Islamic State means enjoining the good and forbidding evil and not waiting for someone to establish the state first and then suddenly begin forbidding the evil and enjoining the good.