Sila replied, “Then we too say it.” He went on, “But of what use is ‘There is no god but Allah’ to them when they know nothing of prayer, fasting, the rites of pilgrimage, or almsgiving?” Hudhayfah turned away from him. Sila repeated the question three times, and each time Hudhayfah turned aside. On the third occasion Hudhayfah faced him and said, “O Sila, it will save them from the Fire,” repeating this three times.

Those whom the word saved from the Fire were excused for neglecting the prescribed rites of Islam because they had no knowledge of them. What they actually performed was the very limit of their capability. Their condition resembles that of people who died before the duties were legislated, or before they had the chance to fulfil them—such as someone who dies right after uttering the testimony of faith, before he can practise the obligations, or a person who embraces Islam in a land of unbelief and dies before he can learn the religious laws.

In summary, the evidence advanced by those who do not deem the one who abandons the prayer to be a disbeliever cannot stand against the evidence of those who judge him to be a disbeliever. What the former cite is either weak and non-explicit, entirely irrelevant, restricted by a description that precludes leaving the prayer, confined to a circumstance in which neglecting the prayer is excused, or consists of general texts that are particularised by explicit proofs of his disbelief.

Therefore, once his disbelief is established through sound, uncontested evidence, the rulings of disbelief and apostasy must be applied to him, for a legal ruling revolves around its underlying cause: it exists when the cause exists and ceases when the cause ceases.