take care not to take the choicest of their wealth, and beware the supplication of the oppressed, for there is no barrier between it and Allah.’” Both al-Bukhārī and Muslim recorded this in their Sahīh collections.

He sent Mu‘ādh to Yemen toward the end of his mission, after fasting had been made obligatory—indeed, after the conquest of Mecca, after Tabūk, and after Hajj and jizyah had been made obligatory. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, died while Mu‘ādh was in Yemen, and Mu‘ādh returned to Medina only after his death. He did not mention fasting in this hadith because it is subsidiary and inward. Nor did he mention Hajj, because its obligation applies to particular people rather than everyone, and it is obligatory only once in a lifetime.

For this reason, the scholars differed over declaring someone a disbeliever for abandoning any of these “four obligations” while acknowledging that they are obligatory. As for the “two testimonies of faith,” anyone who does not pronounce them despite being able to do so is a disbeliever by the agreement of the Muslims. According to the early generations of this community, its imams, and the great majority of its scholars, he is a disbeliever both inwardly and outwardly.

A group among the Murji’ah—the Jahmī Murji’ah, such as Jahm, al-Sālihī, and their followers—held that if he assents in his heart, he is a disbeliever outwardly but not inwardly. The basis of this view has already been pointed out. It is an innovated view in Islam that none of the imams held. It has already been explained that inward faith necessarily entails outward profession—and indeed, more than that—and that inward faith, consisting of assent, love, and submission, cannot exist without outward profession.

As for the “four obligations,” if someone denies that any of them is obligatory after the proof has reached him,