Muslim graveyards.

Whoever passes an unqualified verdict of unbelief is mistaken, and whoever passes an unqualified verdict of non-unbelief is likewise mistaken; the correct stance is to differentiate.

This truth is manifest and needs no further proof, so let us leave the side issues.

Now then:

What I fear most is that some bigoted ignoramus will rush to reject this sound hadith, for its unequivocal wording shows that the one who abandons the prayer out of laziness—while still believing it to be obligatory—falls under the general meaning of Allah’s statement, “…but He forgives whatever is less than that for whomever He wills” (Qur’an 4:48). This is exactly what happened not long ago, in the year 1407 AH, when two students of knowledge—one Saudi and the other Egyptian—joined forces to criticize me regarding several reports in the first hundred entries of Silsilat al-Aḥādīth al-Ṣaḥīḥa. Among them was the hadith of Ḥudhayfa ibn al-Yamān, may Allah be pleased with him, numbered 87, whose wording is:

“Islam will wear away just as the design of a garment wears away, until people no longer know what fasting, prayer, sacrifice, or charity are. In a single night the Book of Allah will be taken away, and not a single verse of it will remain. Groups of people will survive—an old man and an elderly woman—who will say, ‘We found our forefathers upon this statement: lā ilāha illā Allah (there is no god but Allah), so we too say it.’” ⦗52⦘