of the prescribed deeds. This is necessarily known to be false in the religion of Islam. Indeed, Jews and Christians generally know that a man does not become a Muslim until he pronounces the two testimonies of faith or does what serves in their place.

When you say, “Every believer is a Muslim,” you do not mean that he has pronounced the two testimonies of faith or fulfilled any of the five pillars. Rather, you mean that he has performed an act of obedience—an inward act of obedience. Yet this is not what is meant by a Muslim in the Quran and Sunnah, nor among the leading scholars, early or later. You then cite the verse as evidence, although the Bedouins had merely manifested outward Islam by pronouncing the two testimonies of faith, whether truthfully or falsely. Allah thus affirmed Islam for them but not faith. Someone unfamiliar with the reality of the matter might therefore suppose that this is the position of the early generations, supported by the Quran and Sunnah: that every believer is a Muslim, but not every Muslim is a believer. Yet the difference between the two positions is greater than that between the early generations’ position and that of the Muʿtazilah concerning faith and Islam. For the Muʿtazilah’s position on faith and Islam is far closer to that of the early generations than the Jahmiyyah’s position is. Their position that those who pray toward the qiblah will remain eternally in Hell, however, is further from the early generations’ position than that of the Jahmiyyah.

The later scholars who championed Jahm’s position on “the question of faith” profess the position of the early generations on this matter, on qualifying one’s profession of faith, on denying faith in the heart where the Quran denies it, and on similar matters. In all this, however, their agreement with the early generations is merely verbal. Otherwise, their position differs utterly from that of the early generations; no position is further removed from theirs.

The position of the Muʿtazilah, the Khawārij, and the Karrāmiyyah concerning what the terms faith and Islam denote is closer to the position of the early generations than the position of