of the Kalimah, that there is no god but Allāh and Muḥammad is His Messenger, becomes a Muslim, and to call him a kāfir is the greatest of sins. Thus it will be seen that membership of the brotherhood of Islām is a thing not to be tested by some great theologian, well-versed in logical quibbling, but rather by the man in the street, by the man of commonsense, or even by the illiterate man who can judge of another by his very appearance, who is satisfied with even a greeting in the Muslim style who requires no further argument when he sees a man turn his face to Qiblah, and to whom Islām means the confession of the Unity of God and the prophethood of Muḥammad.
A doctrine so plainly and so forcefully taught in the Holy Qur’ān and the Ḥadīth stands in need of no support from the great and learned men among the Muslims. But, notwithstanding the schisms and differences that arose afterwards, and the numerous intricacies that were introduced into the simple faith of Islām by the logical niceties of later theologians, the principle stated above is upheld by all authorities on Islām. Thus the author of Mawāqif sums up the views of Muslim theologians in the following words: “The generality of the theologians and the jurists are agreed that none of the Ahl Qiblah (the people who recognize the Ka‘bah as qiblah) can be called kāfir” (Mf. P. 600). And the famous Abū’l-Ḥasan Ash‘arī writes in the very beginning of his book Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn wa Ikhtilāfāt al-Muṣallīn: “After the death of their prophet, the Muslims became divided on many points, some of them called others dzāll (straying from the right path), and some shunned others, so that they became sects entirely separated from each other, and scattered parties, but Islām gathers them all and includes them all in its sphere” (MI. pp. 1, 2).8 Ṭahāwī, too, is reported as saying that “nothing can drive a man out of Īmān except the denial of what makes him enter it” (Rd. III, p. 310). Similarly Aḥmad ibn al-Muṣṭafā says that it is only bigoted people who call each other kāfirs, for, he adds: “Trustworthy Imāms from among the Ḥanafīs and the Shāfi‘īs and the Mālikīs and the Ḥanbalīs and the Ash‘arīs hold that none of the Ahl Qiblah can be called kāfir” (MD. I, p. 46). In fact, it is the Khwārij who first introduced divisions or sectarianism into Islām by calling their Muslim brethren kāfirs, simply because they disagreed with their views.
8 Ash‘arī states this principle by way of a preliminary to a discussion on the different sects of Islām, and then he goes on to speak of the Muslims as being divided into the Shī‘a, the Kḥwārij, the Murji‘ah, the Mu‘tazilah etc. Next he proceeds to discuss the main subdivisions of these heads, those of the Shī‘a being the Gḥāliyah (Extremists) who are again subdivided into fifteen sects, the Rāfidzah who are subdivided into twenty-four different sects, and the Zaidiyah who have six branches. Fifteen subdivisions of the Kḥwārij are spoken of, and so on with regard to the other main sects. All these different sects and sub-sects are spoken of by Ash‘arī as being Muslims, and not even the Gḥāliyah are excluded from Islām, though almost all of them believed in one of their leaders as a prophet, and legalized certain things expressly forbidden in the Holy Qur’ān. For instance, the Bayāniyah , believed in the prophethood of Bayān, their founder; the followers of ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mu‘āwiyah believed in their founder as Lord and as a prophet; and so it was with many others of them. Even these people are called Muslims because they still believed in the prophethood of Muḥammad and in the Divine origin of the Holy Qur’ān and followed the law of Islām. The modern followers of Ash‘ari who call their Muslim brethren kāfirs for the slightest differences should take a lesson from this.