be among the people of Hellfire.

This, however, concerns a ruling passed on an individual case. As for someone who issues a sweeping verdict that affects the religion of the Muslims—declaring truth to be falsehood and falsehood to be truth, turning the Sunnah into innovation and innovation into Sunnah, branding what is recognizably good as evil and what is evil as good; forbidding what Allah and His Messenger have commanded and commanding what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden—this is an entirely different matter. Over such a person the Lord of all worlds, the God of the messengers, the Master of the Day of Judgment—unto Whom belongs praise in this life and the next—will judge. He says:

“His is the judgment, and to Him you shall all return.” ⦗Al-Qasas 88⦘

“He is the One Who sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth so that He may cause it to prevail over all religion, and sufficient is Allah as Witness.” ⦗Al-Fath 28⦘

Ibn Taymiyyah also said: “There is no doubt that whoever does not believe that judging by what Allah revealed to His Messenger is obligatory is a disbeliever. Whoever considers it permissible to judge between people according to what he himself regards as just, without following what Allah has revealed, commits disbelief. Every nation, after all, commands judgment by justice, yet the ‘justice’ in its religion may be nothing more than whatever its elders deem to be just. Indeed, many who claim affiliation with Islam judge according to customs that Allah has never revealed.”