Can One Support a Party that Endorses / Justifies Unlawful Killing?

With regards to your query please be advised:

1. Allah Most High says: “And the fitnah is more grievous than killing” (Q 2:191). Imām al-Bayḍāwī explains that fitnah here denotes the trial or affliction by which a person is tested, such as expulsion from one’s homeland, and that it is graver than killing, because its hardship, and the suffering it inflicts on the soul, endure over time.
2. The gravity of killing the innocent is expressly encapsulated in the verse on the sanctity of life: “Whoever kills a soul, other than in retaliation for a soul or for corruption in the land, it is as though he had killed all mankind; and whoever gives life to one, it is as though he had given life to all mankind” (Q 5:32).
3. Imām Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, in explaining why the killing of one soul is likened to the killing of all, reasons as follows: if all people knew that a single individual intended to kill every one of them, there is no doubt that they would repel him with such force as to prevent him from achieving his aim. Likewise, if they knew that he intended to kill one specific person, their earnestness and exertion in preventing that killing ought to equal their earnestness and exertion in the first case.
4. On “giving life,” he explains that it means rescuing a soul from the causes of destruction, such as burning, drowning, severe hunger, and extreme cold or heat, and that the equivalence between saving one life and saving all follows the same reasoning as the equivalence between taking one life and taking all.
5. For a Muslim, the following lessons arise from these passages:
   • The sanctity of life is universal, and the status of the victim, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, does not diminish the unlawfulness of their killing.
   • The preservation of life, whether of one or of many, stands as an active moral mandate for every Muslim. When life is threatened, one is duty-bound to use every available means to repel the danger and preserve it.
   • The profound gravity of persecution, oppression and the wrongful expulsion of people from their homes. Such acts inflict profound harm upon individuals and communities and may, in their severity and consequences, be comparable to the gravest forms of injustice.
6. The Qurʾān commands: “Cooperate in righteousness and piety, and do not cooperate in sin and aggression” (Q 5:2), and similarly warns: “Do not incline toward those who do wrong, lest the Fire touch you” (Q 11:113).
7. Within an Islamic ethical framework, a Muslim who clearly recognises that a political entity justifies or facilitates the unlawful taking of human life is religiously forbidden from empowering it.
8. Knowingly extending support, whether through votes, campaign efforts, financial aid, or public endorsement, would constitute prohibited cooperation and would be sinful.

والله تعالى أعلم

And Allāh knows best

Mufti Yaaseen Abass