“Reviling a Muslim is sinful defiance, and fighting him is disbelief.”1 Yet this is a type of disbelief that does not expel a person from the religion; for had it done so, the bond of faith would not have remained with him. The noble verse has already shown that the brotherhood of faith persists even when the believers fight one another.

From this it is understood that abandoning the prayer is disbelief that takes a person out of Islam; for if it were merely immorality, or a lesser form of disbelief, the religious brotherhood would not have been severed by it—just as it is not severed by killing or fighting a believer.

Someone might ask, “Do you then deem the one who withholds the zakah a disbeliever, as the apparent meaning of the verse in Surat al-Tawbah suggests?”

We say: some scholars have indeed held that withholding the zakah is disbelief, and this is one of the two reports from Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him). However, the stronger view in our estimation is that he is not declared a disbeliever, though he is subjected to a grave punishment that Allah has mentioned in His Book and that the Prophet ﷺ has detailed in his Sunnah. Among those texts is the hadith of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) in which the Prophet ﷺ described the punishment of the one who refuses to pay the zakah, concluding with the words: “Afterward he will see his path—either to Paradise or to Hellfire.”