and he cannot do without it. As for the believer who wrongs his own soul, he still enjoys Allah’s patronage in proportion to his faith and God-fearingness, just as he also carries the opposite thereof in proportion to his debauchery. Thus a single person may combine within himself righteous deeds that merit reward and sins that entail punishment, so that he can both be rewarded and punished. This is the doctrine of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), the leading authorities of Islam, and Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamāʿah: no one who has even an atom’s weight of faith in his heart will remain forever in the Fire.

Those, however, who maintain eternal damnation—such as the Khārijites or the Muʿtazilites who claim that none of the people of the Qiblah who enter the Fire will ever leave it, and that there is no intercession for the major sinners, whether before they enter or after—hold that reward and punishment, good deeds and bad, can never coincide in a single individual: whoever is rewarded is never punished, and whoever is punished is never rewarded. The evidences for the Sunni principle we have stated—drawn from the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the unanimous consensus of the ummah—are numerous; this is not the place to elaborate, for we have done so elsewhere. Many corollaries proceed from this foundation.

Accordingly, whoever possesses genuine faith must also have works of obedience commensurate with that faith, even though he may have sins as well, as al-Bukhārī relates in his Ṣaḥīḥ from ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb (may Allah be pleased with him): A man known as “the Donkey” used to make the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) laugh. He would drink wine, and the Prophet would have him flogged. On one occasion he was brought in and someone said, “May Allah curse him—how often he is brought before the Prophet!” The Prophet replied, “Do not curse him, for he loves Allah and His Messenger.” This shows that a sinner—whether by drinking or some other offense—may still love Allah and His Messenger, and love of Allah and His Messenger is the firmest bond of faith.

Conversely, a devout ascetic may, because of the innovation and hypocrisy lodged in his heart, incur Allah’s and His Messenger’s wrath from that perspective, as is widely authenticated in the reports of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī (may Allah be pleased with them) that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) mentioned the Khārijites and said: “One of you will belittle his own prayer beside their prayer, his fasting beside their fasting, and his recitation beside their recitation. They recite the Qur’an but it does not pass beyond their throats; they shoot out of Islam as an arrow shoots through its prey. Wherever you meet them, kill them, for killing them carries a reward with Allah for the one who does so. If I meet them, I will slay them with the slaughter of ʿĀd.” The Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) fought them under the leadership of the Commander of the Believers ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, in compliance with the Prophet’s command.

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) also said of them, in an authentic hadith: “A renegade faction will break away from the best group of Muslims; the nearer of the two parties to the truth will kill them.” For this reason leading scholars such as Sufyān al-Thawrī said, “Innovation is dearer to Iblīs than sin, because innovation is not repented of, whereas sin is repented of.” Their meaning is that the innovator who adopts as religion something Allah and His Messenger never legislated has had his evil deed embellished for him so that he sees it as good, and therefore he does not repent.