on them as they did on Muslims guilty of wrongdoing and aggression, as the reports from them cited elsewhere indicate. The same applies to the rest of the seventy-two sects: whoever among them is a hypocrite is inwardly an unbeliever; whoever is not a hypocrite, but inwardly believes in Allah and His Messenger, is not inwardly an unbeliever, even if he errs in interpretation, whatever his error may be. Some of them may possess a trait of hypocrisy without possessing the hypocrisy that places its bearer in the lowest depths of the Fire.
Whoever maintains that every one of the seventy-two sects commits unbelief that places it outside Islam has contradicted the Quran, the Sunnah, and the consensus of the Companions—may Allah be pleased with them all—as well as the consensus of the four imams and other imams. None of them declared every one of the seventy-two sects unbelievers. Rather, some of them declared certain groups unbelievers on account of particular doctrines, as has been discussed at length elsewhere.
The imams only declared the person in question an unbeliever because the supposed case is one that cannot actually occur. It is impossible for a man to perform none of what he has been commanded to do—prayer, zakat, fasting, and pilgrimage—while committing whatever forbidden acts he can, such as praying without ablution or in a direction other than the qiblah, and marrying his mother, yet still be inwardly a believer. Rather, he would only act in this way because his heart lacks faith.
For this reason, the followers of Abū Hanīfah would declare various categories of people unbelievers for saying such-and-such, because of the contempt it expressed. They would judge a person an apostate for some such utterances, despite the verbal dispute between his followers and the majority concerning deeds: are they included in the term “faith”