“I asked my father, may Allah have mercy on him, about deliberately abandoning the prayer. He said:

‘As for one who abandons it and does not perform it, or who performs it outside its prescribed time, I summon him three times. If he prays, [well and good]; otherwise, I execute him. In my view, he is in the position of an apostate.’”

I say: This is an explicit statement from Imam Ahmad that he did not declare him a disbeliever merely for abandoning the prayer, but rather for refusing to pray while knowing that he would be killed if he did not pray. The reason, then, is that he preferred being killed to praying; this is what indicates that his disbelief is doctrinal disbelief, and thus he became liable to execution.

Similar to this is what Majd Ibn Taymiyyah—the grandfather of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah—mentioned in his book al-Muharrar fi al-Fiqh al-Hanbali (p. 62):

“Whoever delays a prayer out of laziness, rather than out of denial, is commanded to perform it. If he persists until the time for the next prayer is nearly over, he must be executed.”

I say: Thus, he did not declare him a disbeliever because of the delay, but because of persistence that indicates denial. For this reason, Imam Abu Ja‘far al-Tahawi, may Allah have mercy on him, said in Mushkil al-Athar, in a chapter he devoted to this issue—where he cited some of the proofs advanced by both sides, then chose the view that such a person is not a disbeliever—(4/228):

“The proof of this is that we command him to pray, whereas we do not command a disbeliever to pray. Had he become a disbeliever through what he did, we would have commanded him to embrace Islam; then, once he had embraced Islam, we would have commanded him to pray. Our not doing so, and our commanding him to pray, indicates that he remains among the people of prayer. Another proof is that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, commanded the man who deliberately broke his fast one day in Ramadan to offer the expiation he prescribed for him, which includes fasting; and fasting is only valid from Muslims. Since a man is a Muslim when he professes Islam, before carrying out what Islam requires of him in terms of the five daily prayers and the fast of Ramadan, the same applies here: he becomes a disbeliever by denying those obligations, but does not become a disbeliever by abandoning them without denying them; nor can he be