even if such a person was a hypocrite. Here, shunning serves as a discretionary disciplinary punishment. Such punishment applies to those whose neglect of obligations and commission of forbidden acts have become evident: those who abandon prayer and zakah, openly commit injustice and indecency, or promote innovations that contradict the Quran, the Sunnah, and the consensus of the early generations of the Muslim community, and that have clearly been established as innovations.

This is the true meaning of the statement made by some of the early generations and leading scholars:

“The testimony of those who promote innovations is not accepted; they are not to be followed in prayer, knowledge is not to be taken from them, and marriage ties are not to be formed with them.”

These measures are a punishment for them until they desist. Hence, these scholars distinguish between those who promote innovations and those who do not. Someone who promotes them has openly displayed wrongdoing and thus deserves punishment, unlike someone who conceals it. The latter is no worse than the hypocrites whose outward professions the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, accepted, leaving their inner secrets to Allah, despite knowing the true condition of many of them.

Hence the statement in the hadith:

“When a sin is concealed, it harms only the one who commits it. But when it is committed openly and is not condemned, it harms the community at large.”

This is because the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“When people see wrongdoing and do not change it, Allah may soon encompass them all in a punishment from Him.”

Open wrongdoing must therefore be condemned, unlike concealed wrongdoing, for its punishment falls upon the one who commits it