This hadith is a stark reminder of an absolute truth: “Every one of you is a shepherd and every one of you is responsible for his flock”
(كلكم راع وكلكم مسؤول عن رعيته).
It then proceeds to illustrate this principle with concrete examples. If the listener’s mind is captive to hierarchical, pyramidal doctrines rather than the Qur’anic principle of non-coercion, the equal standing of all creatures before the Creator, and the sole sovereignty of God over men, that mind will forcibly reinterpret the hadith through a coercive, top-down lens. It will ignore the absolute truth proclaimed at the outset and twist the text into a charter for hierarchy.
Hence the Qur’an and Hadith must never be cherry-picked; they form an indivisible whole.
This hadith, rightly grasped, illuminates the islamic understanding of anarchy. Leadership and command exist in every sphere of life. Matters are not abandoned to chaos (“If you are three on a journey, appoint one of you as leader,” إذا كنتم ثلاثة في سفر فأمروا أحدكم), as in another famous Hadith . Yet this is no pyramid of domination. The act of appointment arises from voluntary accord, not compulsion.
The historical record of Islamic society documents, in copious detail, that Islamic ordering never entails Pharaonic hierarchy. The clearest proof: every attempt to erect a Western-style priestly authority in Muslim lands has collapsed. This instinctive Muslim resistance to such projects testifies that, despite centuries of efforts to institutionalize religion and graft statist, hierarchical ideology onto Islamic thought, Muslim society retains a genetic immunity against pyramidal social organization.
The Qur’an, in every prophetic narrative, chronicles the core of divine revelation: confrontation with coerciv hierarchy. Faith in God alone is simultaneously disbelief in the taghut, rejection of coercion, and affirmation of the divine Word—granted through Adam’s capacity to encode and decode meaning. Belief in God, His books, and His messengers is, at root, belief in the God-given human faculty of articulate speech (“He created man… He taught him articulate speech,” خلق الإنسان .. علمه البيان)
(Qur’an 55:3–4)
arrayed against tyranny, bloodshed, and corruption (“Will You place therein one who causes corruption and sheds blood?” أتجعل فيها من يفسد فيها ويسفك الدماء؟). More about that in (Qur’an 2:30-36)
This Qur’anically attested human power of eloquent expression—reiterated in manifold forms—is the genetic cipher that guards against the overreach of power structures rooted in coercive hierarchy. Though many Muslim societies have lost this cipher over time, it remains alive and evolving in certain enclaves. One of them is The Bitcoin Majlis. And God knows best.
More on this:
https://bitcoinmajlis.org/the-cryptic-continuum/