to Ahmad, “Then if someone says, ‘I am a Muslim,’ does he make no qualification?”

He replied, “Yes, he makes no qualification when he says, ‘I am a Muslim.’”

I then said to him, “Am I to say, ‘This person is a Muslim,’ when the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, ‘The Muslim is the one from whose tongue and hand the Muslims are safe,’ although I know that people are not safe from him?”

He then cited the report of Ma‘mar from al-Zuhrī, who said, “We therefore consider Islam to be the declaration of faith, and faith to be deeds.”

Ahmad thus explained that when Islam means the declaration of faith, no qualification is made. Wherever this is what is understood by the word Islam, no qualification is made. If this meaning were intended by “faith”—as it is in His words,

“then the freeing of a believing slave”—

what is meant is simply someone who outwardly professes Islam. For the faith upon which worldly rulings depend is outward faith, which is Islam. Thus, in outward rulings, both terms refer to the same thing.

Accordingly, when al-Athram mentioned to Ahmad that the Murji’ah cited as evidence the Prophet’s words, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,

“Free her, for she is a believer,”

he answered that the intended meaning was that she was to be treated as a believing woman under worldly rulings. He did not mean that she was a believer in Allah’s sight who, if she met Him with this declaration alone, would deserve to enter Paradise without entering the Fire. The believer in the unqualified sense in Allah’s Book is the one promised Paradise without entering the Fire, provided he dies upon his faith.

This is why Ibn Mas‘ūd and other early scholars would require anyone who testified to his own faith to testify that he would enter Paradise—meaning, if he died in that state. For he already knew that no one enters Paradise unless he dies a believer.

Thus, if someone says, “I am certainly a believer, and I am a believer in Allah’s sight,” he is told, “Then affirm with certainty that you will enter Paradise without punishment if you die in this state, for Allah has stated that the believers