of it unless faith necessitates and entails them. In that case, the consequence necessarily accompanies what necessitates it, and the effect necessarily accompanies its cause. Any deficiency in obligatory outward deeds is therefore due to a deficiency in the faith within the heart. It is inconceivable that the required faith within the heart should be complete while obligatory outward deeds are absent. Rather, completeness in the former necessarily entails completeness in the latter, just as deficiency in the latter entails deficiency in the former. To suppose complete faith within the heart without outward words and deeds is like supposing a fully realized consequence without what necessitates it, or a complete cause without its effect. This is impossible.

This and other considerations demonstrate the falsity of the position of Jahm, al-Sālihī, and those who followed them concerning “faith,” such as al-Ashʿarī in the better-known of his two positions, most of his followers, and a group of later followers of Abū Hanīfah, such as al-Māturīdī and others like him. They regarded faith as mere assent within the heart, in which all people are equal: it is either absent or present and admits of no division. They held that faith can exist in its entirety within the heart even while a person willingly, without coercion, utters words of disbelief and reviles Allah and His Messenger; and that whenever outward statements establish that their speaker is a disbeliever, this is because those statements necessarily imply the absence of that assent within the heart—in deeds … (1) They also held that righteous outward deeds do not necessarily accompany inward faith within the heart; rather, faith within the heart can be complete without them.

This position is erroneous in several respects:

First: They excluded the love of Allah, fear of Him, and similar things that reside within the heart