As such...

As such, by establishing these two principles, we have excluded anarchism and the schools and theoreticians that assume that certain individuals and groups automatically and inherently have legitimacy to govern and so they are naturally superior to others. 3. God as the only essential source of legitimacy After the acceptance of the second principle, this question will naturally surface: What is that source which grants legal authority and legitimacy to a ruler and government?

So it is in this point that the theory of wilāyat al-faqīh and political philosophy of Islam differ from most other schools especially the current theories. According to this principle which is one of the key foundations of the theory of wilāyat al-faqīh and political philosophy of Islam and accepted unanimously by Muslims and perhaps, by many religions with divine origins apart from Islam, the right to rule and govern, to bid and forbid, originally belongs to God, the Exalted.

Of course, it is worth noting that “to govern” in its specific sense and that is one’s performing of certain actions and direct management of the affairs applies only to human beings, and it is not applicable to God, the Exalted.

In the case of nominal ownership, a person is recognized as “owner” according to a contract between a number of individuals. So, this contract may not be identical in all societies. For example, it might be that in a certain society the contract considers those who find any gold mine, for instance, to be its owners, but in another society it considers all mines as the property of the public and the government is to take charge of them.

Real ownership, however, arises from a sort of ontological relationship in which the existence of the owned thing [ mamlūk ] is originally ascribed to the existence of the owner [ mālik ]. This kind of relationship is technically called the cause-and-effect relationship.