• As for abstaining from all other sins, this is a condition for the obligatory perfection of faith.

• As for the heart’s submission—its willingness to follow the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, together with the deeds of the heart indispensable to this, such as loving Allah and His Messenger, fearing Allah, and placing hope in Him—

• and the tongue’s affirmation—testifying that none has the right to be worshipped except Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah—these too are conditions for the validity of faith: faith cannot exist without both.

• As for the pillars of Islam after the two testimonies of faith, Ahl al-Sunnah have not agreed that any one of them is a condition for the validity of faith, in the sense that abandoning it constitutes disbelief. Rather, they have differed over whether someone who abandons any of them becomes a disbeliever. The most prominent and consequential point of disagreement concerns the five daily prayers, since prayer is the greatest pillar of Islam after the two testimonies of faith, and because texts specifically concerning it indicate that abandoning prayer constitutes disbelief. One such text is the hadith of Jābir ibn ‘Abd Allāh, who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say:

“Between a man and polytheism and disbelief = is the abandonment of prayer.”

Reported by Muslim in his Sahīh and by others (1).