of Islam; nonetheless, they are counted among the rights owed to the faith. The scholars further said: were the people to abandon the ʿEid prayer, for example—even though it is not one of the five prescribed prayers—then it would be obligatory to fight them; they would be confronted with sword and bullet until they perform the ʿEid prayer. Although that prayer is a communal obligation—some scholars regard it as a recommended sunnah, while others, and this is the stronger view, hold it to be an individual obligation—the point here is that fighting may be permitted even against Muslims themselves in order to make them submit to the manifest rites of Islam. For that reason the Prophet ﷺ said: “except for its due.”
This ḥadīth also shows that a person may say, “I shall certainly do such-and-such in the future,” even if he does not add, “if Allah wills.” We must, however, distinguish between someone who is merely informing others of what he intends in his heart and someone who is declaring that he will actually carry out the deed.
As for the first, there is no harm in saying, “I will do it,” without adding “if Allah wills,” because he is simply reporting what is in his mind. The second, who means that he will in fact bring the act into being, should not speak except with the qualification of the Divine will. Allah Most High says: “And never say of anything, ‘I shall certainly do that tomorrow,’ without adding, ‘if Allah wills’” (al-Kahf 23-24).
There is thus a difference between someone who is only disclosing what is within himself and someone who says, “I will do it tomorrow.” Tomorrow is not in your hands: you may die before it comes, or you may live but face obstacles and hindrances; or you may live on yet Allah diverts your resolve from it. This happens often: a person intends to do something tomorrow, or even later the same day, and Allah turns his determination away.
For this reason, when a Bedouin—people who, by Allah, sometimes give instinctively sound answers—was asked, “How did you come to know your Lord?” he replied, “Tracks point to a traveller, and droppings point to a camel; so a sky filled with constellations, and an earth cut with pathways….”