“…has indeed disbelieved.”

I do not imagine that anyone would deem it permissible to coin from this verb an active-participle noun and then say of him, “He is an unbeliever,” for in that case he would also have to apply the same label to everyone about whom the wording “he disbelieved” occurs—such as the one who swears by something other than Allah, the one who fights a Muslim, the one who renounces his lineage, and similar cases mentioned in the hadiths.

Yes, had the report transmitted by Abū Yaʿlā (2349) and others from Ibn ʿAbbās, traced back to the Prophet, been sound—
“The bonds of Islam and the foundations of the religion are three, upon which Islam is built. Whoever abandons any one of them is thereby an unbeliever whose blood is lawful: bearing witness that there is no god but Allah, the prescribed prayer, and fasting in Ramadan”—
then, I say, it would have been a clear proof permitting the unqualified use of the term for the one who abandons the prayer. But it is not authentic, as I have shown in al-Silsila al-Ḍaʿīfa (94).

To sum up: mere neglect is not proof enough to declare a Muslim an unbeliever. Rather, he is a sinner whose case rests with Allah; if He wills He will punish him, and if He wills He will forgive him. The hadith that forms the very backbone of this treatise is an explicit text to that effect, and no Muslim may reject it.

As for the one who is summoned to the prayer, threatened with death should he refuse, and is then executed—he is most certainly an unbeliever whose blood is lawful; no funeral prayer is offered for him, nor is he interred in ⦗51⦘