by committing a prohibited act. In any case, he does not leave the fold of faith; rather, he remains a believer whose faith is deficient.

This is the position of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah, in contrast to the Khārijites and the Muʿtazilites, who excommunicate the perpetrator of a major sin. The Khārijites pronounce him an unbeliever and cast him out of the religion altogether, while the Muʿtazilites expel him from the religion yet stop short of calling him an unbeliever; instead they say, “He occupies a station between two stations—neither believer nor unbeliever.”

Such is their view, an innovated doctrine that conflicts with the proofs and with what Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah uphold. The root of their error is their shortcoming in textual inference: they seized the evidences of threat (waʿīd) and abandoned the evidences of promise (waʿd), such as the Almighty’s words: “Indeed Allah does not forgive associating partners with Him, but He forgives whatever is less than that for whom He wills” (Qur’an 4:48). This verse is one of the texts of promise; it shows that a sinner who has not fallen into polytheism or disbelief may still hope for forgiveness, even though he remains exposed to threat and punishment.

If, however, you set this verse alongside His saying, “Whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger—for him is the Fire of Hell, wherein they shall abide forever” (Qur’an 72:23), anyone who clings to the outward wording of the latter alone would declare such a person an unbeliever.