Ismaʿil ibn ʿAyyash?”
He answered, “No. That man has no idea what comes out of his own head.”
Abu Salih added, “Al-Fazari had at first narrated from Ismaʿil, then abandoned him. The reason was that a man once came to Abu Ishaq and said, ‘Abu Ishaq, your name was mentioned in the presence of Ismaʿil ibn ʿAyyash, and he remarked, “What an excellent man—were it not that he is a skeptic.” ’
I said: This shows that Ismaʿil denied the practice of attaching an exception to one’s affirmation of faith (1); it is therefore likely that he was among the Murjiʾah.
Ibn ʿAdi said: “Whenever Ismaʿil reports from certain scholars of the Hijaz—such as Yahya ibn Saʿid, Muhammad ibn ʿAmr, Hisham ibn ʿUrwah, Ibn Jurayj, ʿUmar ibn Muhammad, or ʿUbayd Allah al-Wassafi—he is never free of error: he may narrate a hadith on its own, connect what is mursal, or raise to the Prophet what is merely mawquf. His narrations from the Syrians, however, are sound when conveyed through a trustworthy transmitter. In general, his hadith should be written down, and one may cite as proof what he narrates from the Syrians in particular.”
I said: The reports Ismaʿil transmits from the scholars of the Hijaz and Iraq are not evidence; his reports from the Syrians are acceptable at the hasan level and may be used as proof so long as nothing stronger contradicts them.
(1) In other words, a believer should not say, “I am a believer, in sha Allah (God willing).” Those who hold this wording to be forbidden are the scholars who regard faith (iman) as a single, indivisible entity. They contend: “I know that I am a believer just as I know that I have uttered the two testimonies of faith,” and thus they say, “I am a believer,” just as one would say, “I am a Muslim.” In their view, anyone who qualifies his faith with an exception (istithna) is doubting it and therefore belongs to the group called al-shakkaka (the doubters).
The correct position is this: if the person making the exception means that he is uncertain about the very basis of his faith, he must be prohibited from doing so, and there is no disagreement on this point. However, if by the exception he merely intends to affirm that he is among the believers whom Allah describes as “those who, when Allah is mentioned, their hearts tremble; when His verses are recited to them, they grow in faith; they put their trust in their Lord; they establish prayer and spend out of what We have provided them” (Surah al-Anfal 8:2-3),
and as He says, “True believers are those who believe in Allah and His Messenger, then entertain no doubt, and who strive with their wealth and their lives in the path of Allah; it is they who are the truthful” (Surah al-Hujurat 49:14), then the exception is permissible. The same applies to someone who makes the exception because he is unsure of his final state, or who links the matter to Allah’s will without harboring any doubt about his present faith.