The ummah will divide into seventy-three sects, of which only one, the AN as-Sunnah wa al-Jama `ah will be saved. They will constitute the great majority of the ummah. Other sects will have their own strange views, will indulge in heresies and fo
llow vain desires. The common element between them will he their deviance from the Quran, the Sunnah and the consensus (of the ummah). However, they will be a small minority. Ibn Taymiyyah was asked about the Prophet’s hadith, “My ummah will divide into seventy-three sects…” In reply he wrote: Praise be to God. This is an authentic and well-known (sahih wa mashhur) hadith, recorded in Sunan and Masanid collections, such as the . Sunan of Abu Dawud, At-Tirmidhi, An-Nasa’i and others. It runs like this: “The Jews divided into seventy-one sects (flirgah), all of which will go to Hell except one; the Christians divided into seventy-two sects, all of which will go to Hell except one; this ummah will divide into seventy-three sects, all of which will go to Hell except one.”"9 In another version of the hadith the words are, “seventy-three millah, communities.”780 In a third version we also have this addition, “Some people asked the Prophet about the sect which will be saved. He said, “The one which will follow the way I and my companions follow today.i781 In a fourth version the last part is like this: “It will be the jams `ah, and the hand of God will be on the jams `ah.s782 This is the reason why the people that will be saved are called Ahl as-Sunnah wa a l Jams `ah, the People of the Sunnah and the Community. They will constitute the overwhelming majority and the common masses.
The remaining sects will expound strange views and heresies and will indulge in vain desires. But even taken together they will neither be equal to nor nearing the number of the people who will be saved. In fact, they will be very few; the common element between them that will distinguish them will be their deviation from the Quran, the Sunnah and the Consensus, for had they adhered to the Sunnah and Consensus, they would have been part of the Ahl as-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah.
As for the identification of these sects, a number of people have written on the subject and mentioned their names in their works on views and doctrines (magalat). But the point that a particular sect named by them is one of those seventy two deviant sects has to be proved. Let.us recall that God has forbidden saying anything without knowledge, particularly in matters like this. He has said, “Say: The things that my Lord has instead forbidden are shameful deeds, whether open or secret, sins and trespasses against truth or reason, assigning of partners to God, for which he has given no authority, and saying things about God of which you have no knowledge” (7:33). And, “You people! Eat of what is on earth lawful and good; and do not follow the footsteps of the Evil One, for he is to you an avowed enemy. He commands you what is evil and shameful, and that you should say of God that of which you have no knowledge” (2:168). Pursue not that of which you have no knowledge” (17:306).
Many people talk about these sects merely on the basis of conjectures and predilections. The sect they belong to or the people that follow their leaders, they call Ahl as-Sunnah wa a 1-Jams` ah, and those who oppose them, they call heretics. This is plainly wrong. For the people of Truth and Sunnah will have no leader other than the Prophet (pbuh), of whom God says, “He does not say anything of (his own) desire, (and) what he says is inspiration (wahi) which is sent down to him- (53:3). What he says is to be believed and what he commands is to be obeyed. No one else enjoys this position, and no one else is to be followed in all that he says. The Prophet (pbuh) is the only exception…
It is clear from this that the people who will be saved are the people of hadith and Sunnah, who do not have any leader other than the Prophet. Of all the people they are those who know his life and words best, who are aware which reports about him are authentic and which are not. Their scholars have a better knowledge and understanding of these things and follow them best. More than anyone else they believe in the Sunnah of the Prophet and act upon it, love those who love him, and oppose those who oppose him. They think over the issues in the light of the Quran and the wisdom (hikmah of the Prophet) and do not raise anything to the status of a principle or advocate it unless it is derived from what has come down from the Prophet. In fact they base their ideas and doctrines on the Quran and the wisdom that the Prophet has given. They refer the issues which people have debated, such as Divine attributes, fore-ordainment (qadr), reward and punishment, the interpretation of terms, the duty of enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong… to God and His Prophet. The words that are ambiguous and have been interpreted in different ways by different people, they interpret in the sense which is closest to the Quran and Sunnah, and reject all the other senses which are opposed to them. They neither run after conjectures nor follow vain desires, for they believe that indulgence into conjecture is ignorance and pursuance of desires without any clear guidance from God is folly…
It may be noted, however, that those who follow one scholar or the other in matters regarding the principles of religion and theology (kalam) fall into different categories. Some oppose the Sunnah on major principles, others oppose the Sunnah on minor issues. Furthermore, it is possible that those who refute the views of others which are far more removed from the Sunnah than their own views may be right in what they say in refuting wrong doctrines or supporting the right ones, but they may have gone too far in their refutation and rejected some part of the truth and defended some untruth. That is to say, they may have a great heresy (bid `ah) through a lesser heresy and demolished a greater untruth through a lesser untruth. This is the condition of most of the theologians (ahl al-kalam) within the fold of the Ahl as-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah.
If people like these do not severe their relations from the Muslim community (jamd `at al-Muslimin) on the basis of the heresies they expound, taking them as the criterion for friendship or enmity, they are only guilty of saying something wrong. We hope that God will forgive mistakes like this and pardon those who commit them… But if they take as friends those who agree with them and as enemies those who disagree with them, and divide the Muslim community into their supporters and opponents, and call the latter kafir orfasiq even though they differ from them in matters in which opinions may differ, and think that they should fight them, they will then be called schismatic and secessionist.
That is why the first group of people who seceded from the Muslim community were the Khawarij; they went out of the boundaries of Islam… The hadith which we have about them has come down to us through ten different channels all of which have been noted by Muslim in his Sahih. Some of them have also been noted by Al-Bukhari in his Sahih. The Companions of the Prophet fought them under the command of Amir al-Mu’minin `Ali Ibn Abi Talib, and were one with regard to them… When they seceded from the Muslim community and
regarded its members as kafir and justified taking up the sword against them, the Prophet’s word about them proved true. He said, “You will look down upon your salah in comparison to their salah, your fasting in comparison to their fasting, and you reading the Quran in comparison to their reading. But they will read the Quran and their reading will not go down their throat. They will move out of Islam as an arrow moves out of the prey it kills. Kill them whenever you get them, you will be rewarded for killing them on the Day of judgment.i783
As for identifying those sects condemned to Hell, the first man who discussed the issue was YUsuf Ibn Asbat,784 then `Abdullah Ibn Al-Mubarak.809 Both are outstanding scholars and imams. They have said that all heresies have proceeded from four sects: Rawafid, Khawarij, Qadariyyah, and Murji’ah. “What about the Jahmiyyah?” Ibn Al-Mubarak was asked. He said, “They are not part of the ummah.” He used to say, “We do not quote the words of the Jews and the Christians, nor do we quote the words of the Jahmiyyah.” A number of scholars from the school of Ahmad agree with this assessment. They say that the Jahmiyyah are infidel; they cannot, therefore, be included in the seventy-two sects, just as the hypocrites who have no faith in their hearts, who only pay lip service to Islam and are nothing but zindiqs, are not included in them. Other Hanbali scholars, however, include them in the list; consequently they count the sources of heresy to be five.
The reason for this difference lies in the answer that these two group give to the question whether the people expounding heretical ideas (ahl al-bid `ah) may be excommunicated as kafirun. Those who exclude the Jahmiyyah from the list of seventy-two sects do excommunicate the expounders of heresies, for everyone who comes out with a heresy cannot be excommunicated. They rather categorize them with the people that deserve punishment in `ala (ahl al-wa `id) like the intransigent (fussaq) and the sinners (`usat). The words of the Prophet that “they will go to Hell,” they point out, should be understood in the same sense in which it is said about other sinners, such as those who misappropriate the property of orphans. God has said, “Those who unjustly eat the property of orphans, eat up a fire into their own bodies” (4:10). Those, on the other hand, who include the Jahmiyyah in the list are of two kinds, those who call no one kafir and those who call all of them kafir. The latter group is comprised of some scholars of later periods from among the followers of the a’immah or the theologians.
However, in case of the Murji’ah and the Shi’ah Mufaddilah (i.e. those who simply assert that `All was superior to the other three righteous caliphs) and others, the Elders and the a’immah are one that they cannot be called kafir. Ahmad’s statements with regard to them are quite clear that they cannot be called kafir. However, there are within his school scholars who have indiscriminately dubbed all heretical sects including these as kafir, some have also said that they are condemned to Hell forever. This is wrong, and certainly opposed to the principles of Ahmad as well as the Shari’ah.
Those who do not excommunicate any heretical sect do so because they put the heretics (ahl al-bid `ah) with the sinners. They say that just as the Ahl as-Sunnah wa al-Jamd’ah do not call anyone kafir because of his sin, they would not like to call anyone kafir on account of his heresy (bid `ah)
The Elders and the a ‘ i m m a h are reported to have excommunicated only the Jahmiyyah, who deny God’s attributes, who say that God neither speaks nor sees, that He is not separate from the world, that He has no knowledge, no power, no hearing, no sight and no life, that the Quran is a created object, that the people of Paradise like the people of Hell will not see God, and so on. With regard to the Khawarij and the Rawafid there is no clear word from Ahmad and others that they are kafir. As for the Qadariyyah, who deny God’s fore-knowledge of (human actions) as well as their fore-ordainment and writing, they have called them kafir; however, with regard to those who affirm God’s foreknowledge but not His creation of human actions, they have abstained from this verdict.
I will state here two principles which, I hope, will clarify the issue. First, of those who offer salah no one would be kafir unless he is a hypocrite, for since the time Muhammad (pbuh) was sent as a messenger, given the Quran, and compelled to migrate to Madinah, people were divided into three groups, those who believed in him, those who rejected him and did so openly, and those who were hypocrites and concealed their rejection of him. When this is the case we may have among the heretical sects (ahl al-bid `ah) those who are hypocrites and enemies of Islam (zindiq); they are kafir. Such people are mostly found among the Rawafid and the Jahmiyyah. Their leaders were hypocrites and zindigs, just as the man who invented rafd was a hypocrite. The school of the Jahmiyyah, too, was raised on the basis of hypocrisy and zandaqah. This is the reason why zindiqs who come from the Karmathian esoterics and pose as philosophers incline towards the Rawafid and Jahmiyyah with whom they have great affinity.
Among the heretical sects we may also have people who have faith in their heart but are guilty of ignorance, wrongdoing, and mistakes with regard to the Sunnah. Such people are neither kafir nor hypocrites. They may be doing things that render them transgressors (fasiq) and sinners, (‘asi). Some of them may be doing so by mistake, erroneously interpreting the texts; such people will hopefully be forgiven. Some may also have faith and piety to a degree which earns for them a kind of God’s love and support (walayah) commensurate with their faith and piety. This is the first principle.
The second principle is that the doctrine that one expounds may be in itself a faithlessness. For example, one may deny that salah, zakah, fasting or hajj is obligatory, or assert that adultery, drinking wine, gambling or marrying within the prohibited circle is lawful. However, it is possible that the expounder of these doctrines may not have knowledge about them or may not have gotten the words of the Prophet regarding them. Such a person will not be called kafir. This may happen with a person who has embraced Islam new, or who is born and brought up in a place that Islam has not reached. He cannot, therefore, be called kafir on the grounds that he denies something revealed to the Prophet, for he does not know that it was revealed to him.
The doctrines of the Jahmiyyah belong to this category, because they negate the attributes with which God is qualified and which He has revealed to the Prophet. There are three reasons why they have been condemned so strongly. First, the texts which contradict their doctrines are in abundance in the Quran, hadith and the Consensus, and are well known, and they just reject them by misinterpreting them. Second, their doctrines amount to negation of the Creator; however, it is possible that some of them may not have realized that their doctrines negate the Creator. Just as the basis of faith is belief in God, the basis of unfaith (kufr) is the denial of God. Third, they contradict truths which are agreed upon in all religions and testified to by human nature.
In spite of this, many Muslims are not able to see the real import of their doctrines; some even think that the truth is with them since they put forth their objections quite forcefully. These Muslims do have faith in God and in His Messenger and sincerely believe in them in their hearts, but the argument which these heretics advance confuse them as they confuse themselves. Certainly these Muslims are not kafir at all; some of them may be transgressors and wrongdoers; some may be mistaken and God may hopefully forgive them; and some may even have, along with their erroneous ideas, the faith and piety which earns them God’s support, and love (walayah) commensurate with their faith and piety.
Author: Ibn Taymiyyah
Islamic Topic: The purpose of government
Source: Book: [Fatawd 3:345-55] / Also mentioned in “Ibn Taymiyyah Expounds on Islam”Rich Text AreaToolbarBold (Ctrl / Alt+Shift + B)Italic (Ctrl / Alt+Shift + I)Strikethrough (Alt+Shift+D)Unordered list (Alt+Shift+U)Ordered list (Alt+Shift+O)Blockquote (Alt+Shift+Q)Align Left (Alt+Shift+L)Align Center (Alt+Shift+C)Align Right (Alt+Shift+R)Insert/edit link (Alt+Shift+A)Unlink (Alt+Shift+S)Insert More Tag (Alt+Shift+T)Toggle spellchecker (Alt+Shift+N)▼
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The ummah will divide into seventy-three sects, of which only one, the AN as-Sunnah wa al-Jama `ah will be saved. They will constitute the great majority of the ummah. Other sects will have their own strange views, will indulge in heresies and follow vain desires. The common element between them will he their deviance from the Quran, the Sunnah and the consensus (of the ummah). However, they will be a small minority. Ibn Taymiyyah was asked about the Prophet’s hadith, “My ummah will divide into seventy-three sects…” In reply he wrote: Praise be to God. This is an authentic and well-known (sahih wa mashhur) hadith, recorded in Sunan and Masanid collections, such as the . Sunan of Abu Dawud, At-Tirmidhi, An-Nasa’i and others. It runs like this: “The Jews divided into seventy-one sects (flirgah), all of which will go to Hell except one; the Christians divided into seventy-two sects, all of which will go to Hell except one; this ummah will divide into seventy-three sects, all of which will go to Hell except one.”"9 In another version of the hadith the words are, “seventy-three millah, communities.”780 In a third version we also have this addition, “Some people asked the Prophet about the sect which will be saved. He said, “The one which will follow the way I and my companions follow today.i781 In a fourth version the last part is like this: “It will be the jams `ah, and the hand of God will be on the jams `ah.s782 This is the reason why the people that will be saved are called Ahl as-Sunnah wa a l Jams `ah, the People of the Sunnah and the Community. They will constitute the overwhelming majority and the common masses.
The remaining sects will expound strange views and heresies and will indulge in vain desires. But even taken together they will neither be equal to nor nearing the number of the people who will be saved. In fact, they will be very few; the common element between them that will distinguish them will be their deviation from the Quran, the Sunnah and the Consensus, for had they adhered to the Sunnah and Consensus, they would have been part of the Ahl as-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah.
As for the identification of these sects, a number of people have written on the subject and mentioned their names in their works on views and doctrines (magalat). But the point that a particular sect named by them is one of those seventy two deviant sects has to be proved. Let.us recall that God has forbidden saying anything without knowledge, particularly in matters like this. He has said, “Say: The things that my Lord has instead forbidden are shameful deeds, whether open or secret, sins and trespasses against truth or reason, assigning of partners to God, for which he has given no authority, and saying things about God of which you have no knowledge” (7:33). And, “You people! Eat of what is on earth lawful and good; and do not follow the footsteps of the Evil One, for he is to you an avowed enemy. He commands you what is evil and shameful, and that you should say of God that of which you have no knowledge” (2:168). Pursue not that of which you have no knowledge” (17:306).
Many people talk about these sects merely on the basis of conjectures and predilections. The sect they belong to or the people that follow their leaders, they call Ahl as-Sunnah wa a 1-Jams` ah, and those who oppose them, they call heretics. This is plainly wrong. For the people of Truth and Sunnah will have no leader other than the Prophet (pbuh), of whom God says, “He does not say anything of (his own) desire, (and) what he says is inspiration (wahi) which is sent down to him- (53:3). What he says is to be believed and what he commands is to be obeyed. No one else enjoys this position, and no one else is to be followed in all that he says. The Prophet (pbuh) is the only exception…
It is clear from this that the people who will be saved are the people of hadith and Sunnah, who do not have any leader other than the Prophet. Of all the people they are those who know his life and words best, who are aware which reports about him are authentic and which are not. Their scholars have a better knowledge and understanding of these things and follow them best. More than anyone else they believe in the Sunnah of the Prophet and act upon it, love those who love him, and oppose those who oppose him. They think over the issues in the light of the Quran and the wisdom (hikmah of the Prophet) and do not raise anything to the status of a principle or advocate it unless it is derived from what has come down from the Prophet. In fact they base their ideas and doctrines on the Quran and the wisdom that the Prophet has given. They refer the issues which people have debated, such as Divine attributes, fore-ordainment (qadr), reward and punishment, the interpretation of terms, the duty of enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong… to God and His Prophet. The words that are ambiguous and have been interpreted in different ways by different people, they interpret in the sense which is closest to the Quran and Sunnah, and reject all the other senses which are opposed to them. They neither run after conjectures nor follow vain desires, for they believe that indulgence into conjecture is ignorance and pursuance of desires without any clear guidance from God is folly…
It may be noted, however, that those who follow one scholar or the other in matters regarding the principles of religion and theology (kalam) fall into different categories. Some oppose the Sunnah on major principles, others oppose the Sunnah on minor issues. Furthermore, it is possible that those who refute the views of others which are far more removed from the Sunnah than their own views may be right in what they say in refuting wrong doctrines or supporting the right ones, but they may have gone too far in their refutation and rejected some part of the truth and defended some untruth. That is to say, they may have a great heresy (bid `ah) through a lesser heresy and demolished a greater untruth through a lesser untruth. This is the condition of most of the theologians (ahl al-kalam) within the fold of the Ahl as-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah.
If people like these do not severe their relations from the Muslim community (jamd `at al-Muslimin) on the basis of the heresies they expound, taking them as the criterion for friendship or enmity, they are only guilty of saying something wrong. We hope that God will forgive mistakes like this and pardon those who commit them… But if they take as friends those who agree with them and as enemies those who disagree with them, and divide the Muslim community into their supporters and opponents, and call the latter kafir orfasiq even though they differ from them in matters in which opinions may differ, and think that they should fight them, they will then be called schismatic and secessionist.
That is why the first group of people who seceded from the Muslim community were the Khawarij; they went out of the boundaries of Islam… The hadith which we have about them has come down to us through ten different channels all of which have been noted by Muslim in his Sahih. Some of them have also been noted by Al-Bukhari in his Sahih. The Companions of the Prophet fought them under the command of Amir al-Mu’minin `Ali Ibn Abi Talib, and were one with regard to them… When they seceded from the Muslim community and regarded its members as kafir and justified taking up the sword against them, the Prophet’s word about them proved true. He said, “You will look down upon your salah in comparison to their salah, your fasting in comparison to their fasting, and you reading the Quran in comparison to their reading. But they will read the Quran and their reading will not go down their throat. They will move out of Islam as an arrow moves out of the prey it kills. Kill them whenever you get them, you will be rewarded for killing them on the Day of judgment.i783
As for identifying those sects condemned to Hell, the first man who discussed the issue was YUsuf Ibn Asbat,784 then `Abdullah Ibn Al-Mubarak.809 Both are outstanding scholars and imams. They have said that all heresies have proceeded from four sects: Rawafid, Khawarij, Qadariyyah, and Murji’ah. “What about the Jahmiyyah?” Ibn Al-Mubarak was asked. He said, “They are not part of the ummah.” He used to say, “We do not quote the words of the Jews and the Christians, nor do we quote the words of the Jahmiyyah.” A number of scholars from the school of Ahmad agree with this assessment. They say that the Jahmiyyah are infidel; they cannot, therefore, be included in the seventy-two sects, just as the hypocrites who have no faith in their hearts, who only pay lip service to Islam and are nothing but zindiqs, are not included in them. Other Hanbali scholars, however, include them in the list; consequently they count the sources of heresy to be five.
The reason for this difference lies in the answer that these two group give to the question whether the people expounding heretical ideas (ahl al-bid `ah) may be excommunicated as kafirun. Those who exclude the Jahmiyyah from the list of seventy-two sects do excommunicate the expounders of heresies, for everyone who comes out with a heresy cannot be excommunicated. They rather categorize them with the people that deserve punishment in `ala (ahl al-wa `id) like the intransigent (fussaq) and the sinners (`usat). The words of the Prophet that “they will go to Hell,” they point out, should be understood in the same sense in which it is said about other sinners, such as those who misappropriate the property of orphans. God has said, “Those who unjustly eat the property of orphans, eat up a fire into their own bodies” (4:10). Those, on the other hand, who include the Jahmiyyah in the list are of two kinds, those who call no one kafir and those who call all of them kafir. The latter group is comprised of some scholars of later periods from among the followers of the a’immah or the theologians.
However, in case of the Murji’ah and the Shi’ah Mufaddilah (i.e. those who simply assert that `All was superior to the other three righteous caliphs) and others, the Elders and the a’immah are one that they cannot be called kafir. Ahmad’s statements with regard to them are quite clear that they cannot be called kafir. However, there are within his school scholars who have indiscriminately dubbed all heretical sects including these as kafir, some have also said that they are condemned to Hell forever. This is wrong, and certainly opposed to the principles of Ahmad as well as the Shari’ah.
Those who do not excommunicate any heretical sect do so because they put the heretics (ahl al-bid `ah) with the sinners. They say that just as the Ahl as-Sunnah wa al-Jamd’ah do not call anyone kafir because of his sin, they would not like to call anyone kafir on account of his heresy (bid `ah)
The Elders and the a ‘ i m m a h are reported to have excommunicated only the Jahmiyyah, who deny God’s attributes, who say that God neither speaks nor sees, that He is not separate from the world, that He has no knowledge, no power, no hearing, no sight and no life, that the Quran is a created object, that the people of Paradise like the people of Hell will not see God, and so on. With regard to the Khawarij and the Rawafid there is no clear word from Ahmad and others that they are kafir. As for the Qadariyyah, who deny God’s fore-knowledge of (human actions) as well as their fore-ordainment and writing, they have called them kafir; however, with regard to those who affirm God’s foreknowledge but not His creation of human actions, they have abstained from this verdict.
I will state here two principles which, I hope, will clarify the issue. First, of those who offer salah no one would be kafir unless he is a hypocrite, for since the time Muhammad (pbuh) was sent as a messenger, given the Quran, and compelled to migrate to Madinah, people were divided into three groups, those who believed in him, those who rejected him and did so openly, and those who were hypocrites and concealed their rejection of him. When this is the case we may have among the heretical sects (ahl al-bid `ah) those who are hypocrites and enemies of Islam (zindiq); they are kafir. Such people are mostly found among the Rawafid and the Jahmiyyah. Their leaders were hypocrites and zindigs, just as the man who invented rafd was a hypocrite. The school of the Jahmiyyah, too, was raised on the basis of hypocrisy and zandaqah. This is the reason why zindiqs who come from the Karmathian esoterics and pose as philosophers incline towards the Rawafid and Jahmiyyah with whom they have great affinity.
Among the heretical sects we may also have people who have faith in their heart but are guilty of ignorance, wrongdoing, and mistakes with regard to the Sunnah. Such people are neither kafir nor hypocrites. They may be doing things that render them transgressors (fasiq) and sinners, (‘asi). Some of them may be doing so by mistake, erroneously interpreting the texts; such people will hopefully be forgiven. Some may also have faith and piety to a degree which earns for them a kind of God’s love and support (walayah) commensurate with their faith and piety. This is the first principle.
The second principle is that the doctrine that one expounds may be in itself a faithlessness. For example, one may deny that salah, zakah, fasting or hajj is obligatory, or assert that adultery, drinking wine, gambling or marrying within the prohibited circle is lawful. However, it is possible that the expounder of these doctrines may not have knowledge about them or may not have gotten the words of the Prophet regarding them. Such a person will not be called kafir. This may happen with a person who has embraced Islam new, or who is born and brought up in a place that Islam has not reached. He cannot, therefore, be called kafir on the grounds that he denies something revealed to the Prophet, for he does not know that it was revealed to him.
The doctrines of the Jahmiyyah belong to this category, because they negate the attributes with which God is qualified and which He has revealed to the Prophet. There are three reasons why they have been condemned so strongly. First, the texts which contradict their doctrines are in abundance in the Quran, hadith and the Consensus, and are well known, and they just reject them by misinterpreting them. Second, their doctrines amount to negation of the Creator; however, it is possible that some of them may not have realized that their doctrines negate the Creator. Just as the basis of faith is belief in God, the basis of unfaith (kufr) is the denial of God. Third, they contradict truths which are agreed upon
in all religions and testified to by human nature.
In spite of this, many Muslims are not able to see the real import of their doctrines; some even think that the truth is with them since they put forth their objections quite forcefully. These Muslims do have faith in God and in His Messenger and sincerely believe in them in their hearts, but the argument which these heretics advance confuse them as they confuse themselves. Certainly these Muslims are not kafir at all; some of them may be transgressors and wrongdoers; some may be mistaken and God may hopefully forgive them; and some may even have, along with their erroneous ideas, the faith and piety which earns them God’s support, and love (walayah) commensurate with their faith and piety.
Author: Ibn Taymiyyah
Islamic Topic: The purpose of government
Source: Book: [Fatawd 3:345-55] / Also mentioned in “Ibn Taymiyyah Expounds on Islam”
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