praying, fasting or paying zakaah?.
Praise be to Allaah.
Faith in the heart is not sufficient without prayer etc. Rather it is
obligatory to believe in one's heart that Allah is One, with no
partner or associate, and that He is one's Lord and Creator, and to
devote worship to Him alone, may He be glorified and exalted. And it
is obligatory to believe in the Messenger Muhammad(blessings and peace
of Allah be upon him) and that he is truly the Messenger of Allah to
all ofthe two races (mankind and the jinn). All of this is essential,
for it is the foundation of the faith. It is also obligatory for the
accountable individual to believe in everything that Allah and His
Messenger have told us about Paradise and Hell, the Siraat (bridge
over Hell), the Balance and other things referred to in the Holy
Qur'aan and saheeh Sunnah. In addition to that, it is essential to
utter the declaration of faith (shahaadah), testifying that there is
no God but Allah and that Muhammadis the Messenger of Allah, and it is
essential to pray and to do all the other things enjoined in Islam.
Ifthe individual prays, then he has done what he is obliged to do, but
if he does not pray then he has committed an act of kufr (disbelief),
because not praying is kufr.
With regard to zakaah, fasting, Hajj and all the other obligatory
matters, if he believes that they areobligatory but he is too lazy to
do them, then he isnot a kaafir because of that; rather he is
disobedient or sinning, and his faith is weak and lacking, because
faith may increase and decrease. Faith increases when one does acts of
worship and righteous deeds, and it decreases when one commits acts of
disobedience and sin, according to Ahl as-Sunnah wa'l-Jamaa'ah.
With regard to prayer in particular, not praying is kufr according to
many scholars, even if one does not deny that it is obligatory. This
is the more correct of the two scholarly opinions. This is in contrast
to other acts ofworship such as zakaah, fasting, Hajj and so on. If he
does not do them, that is not major kufr accordingto the correct
opinion, but it detracts from and weakens faith, and it is a serious
major sin. Not giving zakaah is a serious major sin; not fasting is a
serious major sin; not performing Hajj when one is able to do so is a
seriousmajor sin – but it is not major kufr if one believes that
zakaah is a duty, fasting is a duty, Hajj is a duty for the one who is
able to do it. So long as one does not deny that these duties are
obligatory, but he is negligent concerning them, then he is not a
kaafir according to the correct opinion.
With regard to prayer, if he does not do it, then according to the
more correct scholarly opinion he is a kaafir in the sense of major
kufr –Allah forbid– even if he does not denythat it is obligatory, as
stated above. That is because the Prophet (blessings and peace of
Allah be upon him) said: "Between a man and shirkand kufr there stands
his giving up prayer." Narrated by Muslim in his Saheeh. And he
(blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: "The covenant that
differentiates between us and them is prayer; whoever does not pray is
a kaafir." Narrated by Imam Ahmad and the authors of the four
Sunanswith a saheeh isnaad. This applies equally to both men and
women. We ask Allah to keep us safe and sound.
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