As recorded in al-Durar al-Saniyyah (1/70)—in reply to someone who asked him, “What brings a man into disbelief, and for what do we fight him?”—he, may Allah have mercy on him, said:

“Islam rests on five pillars. The first is the two testimonies of faith; the other four follow. If a person acknowledges them yet neglects them out of indifference, then although we fight him to make him perform them, we do not declare him an unbeliever for abandoning them. The scholars have differed over whether one who leaves them out of laziness, without denying their obligation, becomes an unbeliever. We pronounce disbelief only in what all scholars unanimously agree upon, namely the two testimonies.”

Third: Some scholars who pronounce the abandoner of prayer an unbeliever build their case on a verse from the Noble Quran, making it the cornerstone of their argument—the Exalted One’s words:

“But if they repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, then they are your brothers in religion.” (al-Tawbah 9:11)

They say the verse shows that Allah made the establishment of prayer a condition for religious brotherhood between us and the former idolaters; hence, whoever fails to observe it is not counted as our brother in faith.

The response to this reasoning is two-fold:

First: Imam Ibn ʿAṭiyyah said in al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz … [12]