I said: Wakiʿ’s khushūʿ (profound devotional humility), combined with his leadership in the Sunnah, afforded him precedence, unlike the khushūʿ of this Murjiʾite—may Allah pardon him. May Allah protect us and you from opposing the Sunnah. A considerable number of the scholars of the ummah inclined to irjāʾ, yet it was never regarded as an independent school. Their position was: “I am, at this very moment, truly a believer in Allah’s sight,” while conceding that they did not know whether a Muslim would die upon faith or upon disbelief. This is a mild statement. What is truly grave is the claim of the extremists among the Murjiʾah: that faith is nothing but inward conviction, and that one who abandons prayer and zakāh, drinks wine, sheds blood, commits adultery, and the like, remains a believer with perfect faith, will never enter the Fire, and will never be punished at all (1).
In doing so they rejected the mass-transmitted hadiths on intercession and emboldened every sinner and highway robber to commit deadly sins—We seek refuge in Allah from abandonment.
The ḥāfiẓ Abū Nuʿaym was mistaken when he said that ʿAbd al-Majīd died in 197 AH. The correct date, as Salamah ibn Shabīb stated, is 206 AH.
163 – Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd ibn Abī Umayyah al-Tanafisī * (ʿ)
A Kufan, nicknamed “al-Ahdab” (“the Hunchback”), a ḥāfiẓ, and the brother of Yaʿlā ibn ʿUbayd.