to Ṣilah ibn Zufar, who was just about to adopt the same understanding that Aḥmad had, saying, “Of what use to them is the statement ‘There is no god but Allah’ when they have no idea what the prayer is…?” Ḥudhayfah—may Allah be pleased with him—turned away, then said to him, “O Ṣilah, it will save them from the Fire,” and he repeated it three times.
This is a clear, explicit proof from Ḥudhayfah that the one who neglects the prayer—and, by analogy, the rest of the pillars—is not a disbeliever, but a Muslim who will be spared everlasting punishment in Hell on the Day of Resurrection. Commit this to memory, for you are unlikely to find it recorded elsewhere.
A Prophetic hadith corroborates this meaning, and, Allah willing, we shall cite it later.
Subsequently I came across al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Sakhāwī’s al-Fatāwā al-Ḥadīthiyya (84 / 2). After quoting several well-known reports that appear to declare the abandoner of prayer a disbeliever, he writes:
“All of these texts are to be taken at face value only with regard to someone who abandons the prayer while denying its very obligation, despite having been raised among Muslims. Such a person is, by the consensus of the Muslims, a disbelieving apostate. If he returns to Islam, his repentance is accepted; if not, he is put to death.
As for the one who leaves the prayer without any excuse—out of sheer laziness—yet still acknowledges that it is obligatory, the sound, explicit position decisively adopted by the majority is that he does not become a disbeliever. According to the most reliable view, once he lets even a single prayer pass beyond its indispensable time—such as delaying ẓuhr until sunset or maghrib until dawn—he is ordered to repent in the same manner as an apostate; if he refuses, he is executed. He is nonetheless washed, prayed over, and buried in the Muslim graveyard, and all other rulings of Islam apply to him.
The description of him as a ‘disbeliever’ is interpreted figuratively, because he shares with the disbeliever certain legal consequences, namely liability to punishment. This reconciles those texts with the authentic hadith in which the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, ‘Five prayers Allah has prescribed…,’ in which he added: ‘If He wills, He will punish him, and if He wills, He will forgive him’; and with his statement, ‘Whoever dies knowing that there is no god but Allah will enter Paradise,’ and similar narrations.
For this reason, Muslims have always permitted the neglecter of prayer to inherit and be inherited from. Were he truly a disbeliever, no forgiveness would be possible for him, and he would neither inherit nor be entitled to inheritance.”
A similar discussion is recorded by Shaykh Sulaymān, son of Shaykh ʿAbd Allah, in his marginal notes on al-Muqniʿ.