that he is to be declared a disbeliever is mistaken, and whoever makes an unqualified assertion that he is not to be declared a disbeliever is mistaken. The correct view is to make the necessary distinctions.

This truth is not obscure; so do not distract me with petty byways.

Furthermore, what I fear most is that some ignorant partisans may rush to reject this authentic hadith because of its explicit indication that one who neglects the prayer out of laziness, while believing it to be obligatory, falls under the general purport of Allah’s saying: “And He forgives whatever is less than that for whom He wills.” As some of them did recently, in the year 1407 AH: two students of knowledge, one Saudi and the other Egyptian, joined forces to criticize me concerning some of the hadiths among the first hundred in al-Silsilah al-Sahihah (The Authentic Hadith Series), including the previously cited hadith of Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman—may Allah be pleased with him—no. 87, which reads:

“Islam will wear away as the pattern of a garment wears away, until it is no longer known what fasting, prayer, religious rites, or charity are. The Quran will be taken away in a single night, and not a single verse of it will remain. Groups of people will remain: an elderly man and an elderly woman, who will say, ‘We found our forefathers adhering to this statement: “None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,” so we say it as well.’”

Silah ibn Zufar said to Hudhayfah: “What benefit will ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah’ be to them when they do not know what prayer, fasting, religious rites, or charity are?!” Hudhayfah turned away from him. He repeated the question three times, and each time Hudhayfah turned away from him. Then, the third time, he turned to him and said: “O Silah, it will save them from the Fire”—three times.

I say: they filled three full pages with attempts to weaken this hadith, in response to my declaring it authentic. Yet they found nothing on which to base their attempt to weaken it except that it was narrated by Abu Mu‘awiyah Muhammad ibn Khazim al-Darir, on the grounds that he held the Murji’ite doctrine and that the hadith accords with the blameworthy innovation of Irja’!