The Khawārij then said: “The sinner must therefore be an unbeliever, since a person is either a believer or an unbeliever.” They then held that ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, and others had sinned, and that whoever sinned had disbelieved. Thus, they declared these two caliphs and the majority of the Muslim community unbelievers. The Muʿtazilah upheld an intermediate position between the two states: the sinner leaves faith but does not enter unbelief.

Opposing them were the Murjiʾah, the Jahmiyyah, and those among the Ashʿariyyah and Karrāmiyyah who followed them. They said: “Performing obligatory deeds and refraining from prohibited bodily acts are not part of faith. Faith does not admit of increase or decrease; rather, it is a single entity in which all believers are equal: angels, prophets, those brought near to Allah, those who follow a middle course, and those who wrong themselves.”

The jurists among the Murjiʾah said: “Faith is affirmation in the heart and by the tongue.” Most of their speculative theologians said: “It is affirmation in the heart,” while some said: “It is affirmation by the tongue.” They argued: “If practical obligations were included in faith, anyone who failed to fulfil them would fall outside it, just as the Khawārij maintain.” At the root of all these views is their mistaken assumption that whoever abandons part of faith has abandoned it entirely.

As for the people of the Sunnah and the united community—all the Companions, the Successors, the leading scholars of the Sunnah, the hadith scholars, and the vast majority of jurists and Sufis, such as Mālik, al-Thawrī, al-Awzāʿī, Hammād ibn Zayd, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal