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Allah has affirmed in the Quran that Islam may exist without faith, in His words, Exalted is He:

“The Bedouins say, ‘We believe.’ Say, ‘You have not believed; rather, say, “We have submitted,” for faith has not yet entered your hearts. If you obey Allah and His Messenger, He will not diminish the reward of your deeds in the least.’”

It is also established in the two Sahīh collections that Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqās said:

“The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, gave gifts to a group—in another narration, ‘made a distribution’—but left one of them without anything, although he was the one I admired most. I said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, why have you passed over so-and-so? By Allah, I certainly consider him a believer.’ The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, replied, ‘Or a Muslim.’ I said this three times, and the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, repeated his response to me three times. Then he said, ‘I give to a man even though another is dearer to me than he is, for fear that Allah might cast him face down into the Fire.’”

In another narration:

“He struck me between my neck and shoulder and said, ‘Are you arguing with me, Saʿd?’”

As for this Islam, whose adherents Allah has described as not yet having faith enter their hearts: is it an Islam for which they are rewarded, or is it of the same kind as the Islam of the hypocrites?

There are two well-known views on this among the early and later scholars.

The first is that it is an Islam for which they are rewarded and which takes them out of disbelief and hypocrisy. This is reported from al-Hasan, Ibn Sīrīn, and Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī