upon his sons, as did Jacob: “O my sons, Allah has chosen this religion for you, so do not die except as Muslims.”’ And He said:

‘And say to those who were given the Scripture and to the unlettered, “Have you submitted yourselves?” If they submit, they are rightly guided.’

And elsewhere He said:

‘Say, “We believe in Allah and in what has been sent down to us and what was sent down to Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac,”’

up to His words:

‘So if they believe in the same as you believe in, they are rightly guided.’

Thus Allah ruled that whoever embraces Islam is rightly guided and whoever believes is rightly guided, thereby treating the two alike.”

He said:

“We have already presented the full argument that Islam is faith and that the two are neither separate nor distinct elsewhere. We therefore preferred not to repeat it here, wishing to avoid undue length and repetition. However, we shall present arguments here that we have not mentioned elsewhere and explain the error in their interpretation and in the arguments they have drawn from the Book and the transmitted reports to distinguish between Islam and faith.”

I say: Muhammad ibn Nasr al-Marwazī—may Allah have mercy on him—means that the Muslim deserving of praise is the believer deserving of praise, and that the person who is censured is deficient in both Islam and faith. He also means that every believer is a Muslim and that every Muslim must possess some faith. This is correct and agreed upon. He further means that anyone to whom the designation of Islam is applied is also given the designation of faith. There is a verbal dispute concerning this. He also means that what one term denotes is what the other denotes, but this is not known to have been held by any of the early generations.

Even if it is said, “The two are inseparable,” what one term denotes need not be identical to what the other denotes merely because the two are inseparable. It has not been transmitted from any of the Companions, those who followed them in righteousness, or the renowned imams of Islam that he said:

“The term Islam denotes the same thing as the term