“al-Sahih,” and he noted that it is a mass-transmitted hadith (12/491):
“Two great foundational principles are involved here. One concerns Allah Most High: faith that He has power over all things. The other concerns the Last Day: faith that Allah will restore this dead man and recompense him for his deeds. Yet, since he had faith in Allah in a general sense, and faith in the Last Day in a general sense—that Allah rewards and punishes after death—and had performed a righteous deed, namely, his fear that Allah would punish him for his sins, Allah forgave him on account of the faith in Allah and the Last Day, and the righteous deed, that he possessed.”
Therefore, I advise those young men to exercise restraint in declaring scholars to be innovators or disbelievers, to continue seeking knowledge until they attain proficiency in it, not to be deluded by themselves, and to recognize the scholars’ due and their precedence in this field—especially those who follow the methodology of the righteous predecessors, such as Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah. I would draw their attention to Majmuʿ al-Fatawa, for it is “a small volume filled with knowledge,” particularly to its sections specifically devoted to this important issue—the declaration of disbelief—in which he distinguished between unrestricted declarations of disbelief and declaring a specific individual to be a disbeliever. He said regarding young men like these:
“They have not reflected that declaring someone a disbeliever has conditions and impediments: conditions may not be fulfilled, and impediments may be present, in the case of a specific individual. Nor does an unrestricted declaration of disbelief entail declaring a specific individual to be a disbeliever, unless the conditions are fulfilled and the impediments are absent. This is demonstrated by the fact that Imam Ahmad and most of the imams who stated these unrestricted propositions did not declare most of those who uttered this very statement to be disbelievers.”
That is, those who would say: “The Quran is created,” or, “Allah will not be seen in the Hereafter,” and the like.