a believer or an unbeliever in Allah’s sight according to his state at death and what Allah already knew that state would be; anything before that is of no account.
They said:
“Faith followed by unbelief, whose possessor then dies an unbeliever, is not faith. It is like a prayer that someone invalidates before completing it, or a fast that someone breaks before sunset. Such a person is an unbeliever in Allah’s sight, because He knows the state in which he will die.”
They said the same regarding unbelief. This is the reasoning adopted by many later Kullābīs and others who wish to defend the well-known statement of the people of the Sunnah and hadith, “I am a believer, if Allah wills,” while also maintaining that faith admits of no degrees, and that a person does not doubt the faith he presently possesses, but only his future faith.
Added to this is their assertion that Allah’s love, pleasure, displeasure, and hatred are beginningless. Are these His will, or are they other attributes? They hold “two views” on this.
Most of their early scholars say that pleasure, displeasure, anger, and similar attributes are distinct from will, just as hearing and sight are distinct from knowledge. The same applies to friendship and enmity. All these are eternal, beginningless attributes according to Abū Muhammad ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sa‘īd ibn Kullāb and those who followed him among the speculative theologians and the adherents of the legal schools—the Hanbalīs, Shāfi‘īs, Mālikīs, and others.
They said:
“Allah has loved from eternity someone who was an unbeliever if He knew that he would die a believer. Thus, the Companions were always beloved to Allah, even though they worshipped idols for a period of time; and Allah always hated Iblīs, even before he disbelieved.”
This accords with one of their two views; pleasure and displeasure