And the third position—the most balanced and just—is that qualifying one’s profession of faith is permissible in one respect, while omitting that qualification is permissible in another. If a person means, “I do not know whether I am fulfilling everything Allah has made obligatory upon me or whether He accepts my deeds,” without intending any doubt about what is in his heart, then his qualification is commendable. His intention is to avoid declaring himself pure or asserting with certainty that he has performed a deed as commanded and that it has been accepted from him. Sins are many, and people in general have reason to fear hypocrisy.
Ibn Abī Mulaykah said:
“I met thirty of Muhammad’s Companions, all of whom feared hypocrisy for themselves. Not one of them said that his faith was like the faith of Gabriel and Michael.”
At the beginning of his Sahīh, al-Bukhārī devoted chapters to “Faith and the Refutation of the Murji’ah.”
One of Abū Hanīfah’s followers who wrote on this subject stated:
“Abū Hanīfah, Abū Yūsuf, and Muhammad disapproved of a man saying, ‘My faith is like the faith of Gabriel and Michael’—Muhammad said, ‘Because their certainty is greater’—or, ‘My faith is like Gabriel’s faith,’ or, ‘My faith is like Abū Bakr’s faith,’ or, ‘Like this person’s faith.’ Rather, he should say, ‘I believe in what Gabriel and Abū Bakr believed in.’”
Abū Hanīfah and his followers do not permit qualifying one’s profession of faith on the grounds that deeds are part of faith. They condemn the Murji’ah, by whom they mean those who do not consider it obligatory to fulfil religious duties or avoid prohibited acts, but regard faith alone as sufficient.
The prohibition of qualifying one’s profession of faith has also been justified on the grounds that faith cannot validly be made conditional, since something made conditional does not come into existence until its condition is fulfilled. This is what they said concerning a man’s statement to his wife:
“You are divorced if Allah wills.”
Thus, if faith is made contingent