“associating partners with Allah, sorcery, killing a soul whose life Allah has made inviolable except with due right, consuming an orphan’s property, devouring usury, turning one’s back on the day of battle, and slandering chaste, unsuspecting, believing women.”

Ibn Ḥazm said: “If there were any form of disbelief that was not polytheism, that disbelief would fall outside the major sins, and disobedience to parents and false testimony would then be graver than it—something no Muslim would accept. It is therefore established that every disbelief is polytheism and every polytheism is disbelief; the two are divinely legislated names applied to a single reality.

As for his argument that a polytheist is only someone who assigns a partner to Allah, it collapses on two counts:

1. Christians assign to Allah a partner who creates as He creates, yet he insists they are not polytheists. This is an obvious contradiction.

2. The Brahmins, those who claim the universe is eternal while affirming one eternal Creator, and those who allege prophethood for ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, al-Mughīra, and Bazīgh—all of them do not assign a partner to Allah, yet in Abū Ḥanīfah’s view they are polytheists. This too is a manifest contradiction.

A third refutation is that if the word ‘polytheist’ were confined to its purely linguistic sense—someone who assigns a partner to Allah—then disbelief would likewise apply only to one who totally rejects Allah, not to one who acknowledges Him without denying Him. This would mean that the only disbelievers are the materialists, and that the Jews, Christians, Magians, and Brahmins would not be disbelievers, since they all affirm Allah—something neither he nor any Muslim would ever concede.”