and if he voices it with his tongue while his heart is devoid of it, he enjoys only the outward status of Islam, not the inward reality of faith. Yet if, while able, he refuses to utter it altogether, then—by unanimous agreement of the Muslims, including the early generations, their leading scholars, and the great majority of jurists—he is a disbeliever both outwardly and inwardly.
Shaykh al-Islām also said: “The tawḥīd (monotheism) brought by the messengers necessarily includes affirming divinity—bearing witness that there is no deity except Allah—so that nothing is worshipped but Him, reliance is placed on none but Him, loyalty is shown solely for His sake, enmity is shown only for His sake, and every deed is performed seeking His pleasure.
“What is meant by tawḥīd is not merely the oneness of lordship, namely the belief that Allah alone created the universe, as some scholastics and mystics imagine. They suppose that once they have proven this rationally they have achieved the highest level of tawḥīd. If a person were to acknowledge all the attributes due to the Lord, declare Him free of every imperfection, and admit that He alone is the Creator of everything, he would still not be a monotheist until he testifies that there is no deity except Allah alone.”
4 – This magnificent phrase: if a Muslim servant recites it ten times in the morning and ten times in the evening—as recorded in the Musnad (23007): “Whoever, after performing the dawn prayer, says ‘lā ilāha illā Allah’ ten times, it will be equivalent to freeing four slaves; and if he says it after sunset, the same applies”—he attains that tremendous reward, the equivalent of emancipating four persons from the descendants of Ishmael (peace be upon him).
5 – The ḥadīth allows the lawful enslavement of Arabs under the Sharīʿah.
6 – The ḥadīth affirms the merit of those with noble lineage, as related in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (3374) and Muslim (2378): “The best of you in the pre-Islamic era are the best of you in Islam, provided they gain understanding.”
7 – The ḥadīth highlights the excellence of this remembrance, which is the foundation and core of Islam and the sole gateway to entering the faith.