Abū Muʿāwiyah—yet such criticism does not undermine the report.
Still, an important corroborating narration escaped their notice: Abu ʿAwānah transmitted the ḥadīth from Abū Mālik with the same chain and wording, as al-Buṣayrī states in Miṣbāḥ al-Zujājah (3/254). Abu ʿAwānah is an unimpeachable, firmly reliable transmitter.
Our shaykh al-Albānī, in his celebrated Silsilat al-Aḥādīth al-Ṣaḥīḥah (1/130–132), commented on this authentic ḥadīth:
“This report yields an important juristic lesson: the testimony that there is no deity but Allah delivers its utterer from eternal residence in Hell on the Day of Resurrection, even if he fulfils none of the other five pillars of Islam, such as the prayer and the rest.”
It is well known that the jurists differed over the ruling on one who abandons the prayer while acknowledging that it is obligatory. The majority hold that he does not thereby become an unbeliever but a flagrant sinner, whereas Aḥmad—according to what is related from him—considered him a disbeliever who is to be executed as an apostate, not as a ḥadd offender. A sound report from the Companions affirms that they regarded the abandonment of no deed as unbelief except the prayer; this was narrated by al-Tirmidhī and al-Ḥākim. ⦗15⦘
In my view, the majority position is correct. What has been transmitted from the Companions is not a plain proof that they intended by “disbelief” here the kind that dooms its perpetrator to everlasting Hell with no hope of divine pardon. How could that be, when Hudhayfah ibn al-Yamān—one of their foremost members—replied to Ṣilah ibn Zafār, who had almost adopted Aḥmad’s understanding, saying:
“What benefit will ‘There is no god but Allah’ bring them when they do not know what prayer is?” Hudhayfah, after turning away from him, answered, “O Ṣilah, it will save them from the Fire,” three times.
This is an explicit statement from Hudhayfah (may Allah be pleased with him) that the one who neglects the prayer—and, by implication, the other pillars—is not a disbeliever but a Muslim spared from eternal punishment on the Day of Judgment.
Commit this to memory, for you may not find it recorded elsewhere.
Subsequently I consulted al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Sakhāwī’s Fatāwā Ḥadīthiyyah (84/2) and found him, after citing some of the well-known reports that appear to pronounce the one who abandons the prayer a disbeliever, writing:
“All of this is to be taken at face value with respect to the person who gives up the prayer while denying that it is obligatory, though he was raised among Muslims; such a person is ⦗16⦘ a disbeliever and apostate by consensus. If he repents and returns to Islam, it is accepted from him; otherwise he is executed.
“As for the one who abandons it without excuse, merely out of laziness, yet believes in its obligation, the sound, explicit ruling to which the majority have decisively held is that he does not become a disbeliever. Nevertheless—on the stronger view—once he deliberately allows a single prayer to lapse beyond its essential time limit, such as delaying Ẓuhr until sunset or Maghrib until dawn, he is ordered to repent just as an apostate is ordered; if he refuses, he is executed, then washed, prayed over, and buried in the Muslim graveyard, with all the other legal rulings of Islam applied to him.
“The unrestricted use of the term ‘disbelief’ concerning him is interpreted to mean that he shares with the unbeliever certain legal consequences—namely, liability to execution—so as to reconcile these texts with the authentic Prophetical sayings: ‘Allah has prescribed five prayers…,’ which ends with, ‘If He wills He will punish him, and if He wills He will forgive him’; and his saying, ‘Whoever dies knowing that there is no deity but Allah will enter Paradise,’ and others like it.
“For this reason Muslims have continued to inherit from and bequeath to one who abandons the prayer, even though… ⦗17⦘"