2) To call upon other than Allah for a need, such as rain, etc, while believing that only Allah will answer the call is Shirk, by agreement. For example: O Prophet! Send us rain!

This is what I wrote some time ago on a different forum:

Firstly, The Prophet – SallAllahu ‘alaihi wa-sallam – made takfeer of the pagans for merely calling upon other than Allah, even though they explicitly declared that Allah is the only Lord, the Creator, the Provider.

This is reflected in the following verse:

‘Say: Who provides for you from the heavens and the earth? Or who controls hearing and sight and who brings the living out of the dead and brings the dead out of the living and who arranges [every] matter? They will say: Allah. So say: Then will you not fear Him?’

As it is clear that although the pagans believed that Allah is the only provider, they still called upon their idols, claiming that they are merely their intercessors.

Similarly, Allah said of the pagans: ‘Most of them do not believe in Allah, except that they associate partners unto Him’

al-Tabari says in his tafseer: Their belief in Allah is their saying: Allah is our Creator, our Provider, who gives us death and gives us life; while their Shirk is to attribute partners unto Allah in His worship and invocation.

Secondly, when the Hanbali scholars and others explicitly stated the apostasy of the one who calls upon other than Allah, they do not differentiate between one who does so believing the response would come from Allah, and one who does so believing the response would come from the creation.

To differentiate between the two only first appeared after the Da’wah of Sheikh Miuhammd b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab. The advocates of this idea were simply seeking justification for one to call upon others besides Allah. Hence, they argued that when one says: ‘O Sidi ‘Abd al-Qadir, help me!’ He is in reality addressing Allah, while mentioning ‘Abd al-Qadir only allegorically, because he believes in his heart that the response will only come from Allah.

In response, we say that the statement: ‘O so-and-so, help me!’ is Sarih al-Kufr – an explicit statement of Kufr, which does not accommodate Majaz. Just like the word Talaq, is an explicit statement of divorce, and if one says it to his wife even in jest, his wife is divorced. He cannot claim: I only intended it allegorically, whereas my intention was not to divorce her. Similarly, when one makes a statement of clear-cut apostasy, such as: O Sidi fulan, help me! He becomes an apostate, and his claim that he intended something else would be of no use to him.