and the unbelief of hypocrisy. In rulings pertaining to the Hereafter, the hypocrite has the same status as the unbelievers. In worldly rulings, however, the rulings applicable to Muslims may apply to the hypocrite.

It has become clear that religion necessarily involves both speech and action. It is impossible for someone to believe in Allah and His Messenger in his heart, or in both his heart and his speech, while performing no outward obligation whatsoever—neither prayer, nor zakat, nor fasting, nor any other obligatory duty. Performing such duties, but not because Allah has made them obligatory—for example, returning a trust, speaking truthfully, or acting justly in one’s allocations and judgments, without faith in Allah and His Messenger—does not bring a person out of unbelief. For the polytheists and the People of the Book also regard these things as obligatory. Thus, a person cannot be a believer in Allah and His Messenger while performing none of the duties uniquely enjoined by Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

Anyone who maintains that the faith which is obligatory can be attained without performing any obligatory deeds is plainly mistaken, whether he regards performing those duties as a necessary consequence of faith or as part of it—this distinction is merely verbal. This is the innovation of irjāʾ, whose adherents the early generations and the imams denounced so vehemently, making the well-known stern pronouncements concerning it. Prayer is the greatest, most universal, foremost, and most exalted of these duties.