Assalamu'Alaykum
A WARNING AGAINST CASUALLY ACCUSING SOMEONE OF KUFR
by the Great Scholar, The Faqih, The Wali, Habib Ahmad Mashhur Al Haddad
Know that the duty of enjoining good and forbidding evil
must be carried out with wisdom and goodly exhortation. Should it be necessary to enter into a debate with someone, this must be done in the best way possible. Allah the Exalted has said, Summon to the way of your Lord with wisdom and goodly exhortation, and debate with them in the best of ways. [16:125] This is more likely to lead to acceptance and success; to do otherwise would be erroneous and foolish. When you see a Muslim who prays, fulfills his obligations to Allah, avoids what He has forbidden, spreads His message, and builds His mosques and schools, and you wish to invite him to something which you believe to be right, but find that he thinks differently, and that this particular matter has long been controversial among the ulema (scholars), some of whom affirm its validity while others deny it, and he refuses to follow your advice,
if you then accuse him of kufr (disbelief) just because his opinion is different from yours, you are guilty of a monstrous crime and a grave deviation which Allah has forbidden, for He has commanded you to have recourse to wisdom and goodness.
It is the consensus [ijma] of the Umma that it is forbidden to accuse of kufr (disbelief) anyone who recognizes the qibla (the Kaaba as the proper direction of prayer), unless he denies the Able Maker (Majestic and Exalted is He!), commits blatant polytheism not open to interpretation, denies Prophecy, rejects whatever else is known necessarily to be part of religion, or something which has been handed down by many chains of transmission [tawatur], or necessary knowledge that has been confirmed by the Umma’s consensus.
Anyone who rejects something which is known necessarily to be part of religion, such as Tawhid, Prophecy, Muhammad’s status as “Seal of the Messengers” (may Allah bless him and his Family, and grant them peace), the Resurrection on the Last Day, the Judgment, reward and punishment, and the Garden and the Fire is a kafir. No Muslim may claim ignorance as his excuse for this, unless he has only recently entered Islam, in which case he is excusable until he learns about them.
Tawatur is the transmission of information by a group of people reliably known to be incapable of conspiring together to perpetrate a lie, who have handed it down in turn from a group similar to themselves. This can be in relation to the chain of transmission [isnad], as for example in the case of the Hadith which says, “Whoever lies about me deliberately should prepare for his place in the Fire.” Alternatively, it can be in relation to a whole generation, as with the transmission of the Qur’an which was passed on by whole generations who learned, memorized, recited, and taught it all over the earth from east to west, so that everyone received it from everyone else; it therefore stood in no need of an isnad. It can also be the mass transmission of an action, such as those of the actions known in the Prophetic era which have come down to us. Or it can take the form of the transmission of information such as that concerning the miracles, the individual instances of which were transmitted by single isndds, but the ensemble of which came down through tawatur, so that they constitute certain knowledge for every Muslim.
Judging a Muslim to be a kafir in circumstances other than those detailed above is a dangerous thing. There is a Hadith which states, “If a man calls his brother a kafir, then one of them will have deserved the description.” (Transmitted by Bukhari from Abu Hurayra.) Such judgment should only be made by one who, in the light of the Sharia, is aware of the things which cause a man to enter or leave the state of kufr, and of the frontiers established by the Sharia which separate faith from unbelief. It is not permissible for anyone to charge into this area and declare people to be outside Islam merely on the basis of one’s own imagination and conjectures, without seeking firm proofs and certainty, and in the absence of firmly established knowledge. Otherwise, great confusion would ensue, and very few Muslims would be left on the face of the earth.
Neither is it allowable to accuse sinners of unbelief, as long as they have faith and affirm the Two Testimonies.
In a Hadith, Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) related that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and his Family, and grant them peace), said,
“Three things are part of the root of faith:
1) Firstly, to refrain from harming all who say la Ilah Illa Allah, not to accuse them of kufr because of a sin, and not to expel them from Islam because of their actions.
2) Secondly, Jihad continues, from the day Allah sent me until the time when the last of my Umma shall fight the Dajjal; it shall not be abolished by the tyranny of tyrants or the justice of the just.
3) Thirdly, belief in destiny.” (Transmitted by Abu Dawud.)
Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni used to say, “Should we be asked to define which expressions should be judged to be kufr and which would not, we would say that this was an unfulfillable wish, for it consists in a remote goal reached by a difficult road, being derived from the very fundamentals of tawhid; and whoever has not completely understood the furthest limits of realities will be unable to find the proofs necessary to pronounce a verdict of kufr.”
For this reason we warn people against casually accusing people of kufr under any circumstances other than those outlined above, for this matter is extremely serious.
“And Allah guides to the even path; and unto Him is the journeying.”.....