Thus, anyone possessing the power to resist who refuses to submit in obedience to Allah and His Messenger has waged war against Allah and His Messenger. Whoever acts in the land contrary to Allah’s Book and His Messenger’s Sunnah has spread corruption in the land. For this reason, the early generations understood this verse to apply both to disbelievers and to those who pray toward the qiblah. Indeed, most leading scholars included within its scope highway robbers who brandish weapons merely to seize wealth. By taking people’s wealth through armed force, they regarded such robbers as waging war against Allah and His Messenger and spreading corruption in the land—even though the robbers believe their actions to be forbidden and profess faith in Allah and His Messenger. Someone who believes it lawful to shed Muslims’ blood, seize their wealth and fight them is therefore all the more rightly regarded as waging war against Allah and His Messenger and spreading corruption in the land.

Likewise, a belligerent disbeliever who considers Muslims’ blood and wealth lawful and believes it permissible to fight them is more deserving of being fought than an evildoer who believes such acts to be forbidden.

Similarly, an adherent of religious innovation who departs from part of the law and Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and considers it lawful to shed the blood and seize the wealth of Muslims who adhere to the Messenger’s Sunnah and law, is more deserving of being fought than an evildoer—even if he makes this a religious practice through which he seeks nearness to Allah. Likewise, Jews and Christians make waging war against Muslims a religious practice through which they seek nearness to Allah.

For this reason, the leading scholars of Islam agreed that these grave religious innovations are worse than sins whose perpetrators acknowledge them to be sins. Such, too, was the established practice of the Messenger of Allah