religious innovation, who introduce an innovation and declare whoever opposes them to be an unbeliever, such as the Khawārij, the Muʿtazilah, and the Jahmiyyah. This has also occurred among many followers of the Imams, including some followers of Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad, and others.

They may follow this same approach in declaring people unbelievers. Some of them indiscriminately declare all adherents of religious innovation to be unbelievers, then regard everyone who departs from their own position as an adherent of religious innovation. This is precisely the position of the Khawārij and the Jahmī Muʿtazilah. This view is also found (1) among a group of the followers of the four Imams, but it is not the position of the four Imams (2), nor of other leading scholars (3). None of them declared every religious innovator to be an unbeliever. Indeed, the explicit reports transmitted from them contradict this. It may, however, be reported from one of them (4) that he declared someone who held a particular view to be an unbeliever, when what he intended was that the view itself constitutes unbelief, in order to warn against it. If a statement constitutes unbelief, it does not necessarily follow that everyone who makes it must be declared an unbeliever when he does so out of ignorance or on the basis of an interpretation. For establishing unbelief in the case of a particular individual is like establishing that the threat of punishment in the Hereafter applies to him: both are subject to conditions and impediments, as we have explained at length elsewhere.

If, in reality, they are not unbelievers, then neither are they hypocrites. They are therefore among the believers, and forgiveness and mercy are sought for them. When a believer (5) says, “Our Lord, forgive us and our brothers who preceded us in faith” [Surah al-Hashr: 10], he intends every (6) person who