the Kaʿbah. Therefore, it is obligatory to follow His command—glorified be He—when He abrogated the former orientation toward Jerusalem. A believer moves with the divine commands, for he is a servant of Allah: “We only appointed the direction you formerly faced so that We might know who follows the Messenger from those who would turn back on their heels” (2:143).

That statement is open to objection, because limiting disbelief to sheer denial is the doctrine of the Murjiʿah. The things that nullify Islam are many: denial, associating partners with Allah, mocking the religion or any part of it even without denial, and other nullifiers that the scholars have listed in the chapters on apostasy, such as declaring the unlawful lawful or the lawful unlawful.

Shaykh al-Islam Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb mentioned ten of these nullifiers, the most important among them, although in reality they are numerous. Hence, restricting the nullifiers of Islam to denial alone is a serious mistake. Some self-styled writers today attempt to promote this view so that people may feel at ease about the religion: as long as one has not explicitly denied it, he is, in their eyes, a Muslim—even if he prostrates to an idol and says, “I have not denied anything; I affirm monotheism, this is only a sin.” Or if he sacrifices to other than Allah, insults Allah, His Messenger, or the religion, they still regard him as a Muslim because, they claim, he has not denied the faith. This is a grave error that would completely obliterate the religion. We must therefore beware of this tremendous danger.