be a believer inwardly, according to the consensus of all who face the qiblah. Even the Karrāmiyyah, who call a hypocrite a believer and say, “Faith is the spoken declaration,” maintain that only inward faith benefits a person in the Hereafter. Some have reported that they regard hypocrites as inhabitants of Paradise, but this misrepresents their position. Their disagreement concerned only the designation, not the ruling, owing to the Murji’ah’s misconception that faith is neither divisible nor admits of degrees.

For this reason, the most the jurists required of a slave whose emancipation fulfils an expiation was outward action. They therefore disagreed over whether emancipating a young child suffices. There are two well-known positions among the early generations, both transmitted from Ahmad.

One position holds that emancipating the child does not suffice, because faith consists of speech and action, whereas the child has not personally embraced faith; his status as a believer merely follows that of his parents for the purposes of worldly rulings. No one, however, stipulated that the slave must be known to be a believer inwardly.

The other position holds that emancipating the child does suffice, because emancipation belongs to outward legal rulings, and the child’s status follows that of his parents. Just as he inherits from them and the funeral prayer is offered for him—and it is offered only for a believer—so too may he be emancipated.

Likewise, since the time of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, hypocrites who did not reveal their hypocrisy have had the funeral prayer offered for them upon their death and have been buried in Muslim cemeteries. In the cemetery used by the Muslims during his lifetime and those of his caliphs and Companions, everyone who outwardly professed faith was buried, even if inwardly a hypocrite. Nowhere in the lands of Islam did hypocrites have a cemetery separating them from the Muslims, as Jews and Christians have separate cemeteries.

Those buried in Muslim cemeteries had the funeral prayer offered for them by the Muslims. Yet, according to the explicit text of the Quran, it is impermissible to offer the funeral prayer for someone known to be a hypocrite. It is thus clear that this was based on outward faith, while Allah takes charge of what is concealed within. The Prophet used to