Warning Against the Innovation of Declaring People Disbelievers for Committing Sins

The Shaykh : It is perhaps useful to mention the evil of deviating from the creed of the righteous Salaf, which includes what has appeared in this era of ours: scattered groups in the Islamic lands who were united by a misguided creed, namely their declaring Muslims to be disbelievers because of their committing sins. In other words, they did not distinguish between disbelief of the heart, disbelief of belief, and practical disbelief. So, among the evils of this deviation was that many of them were imprisoned, to our great regret. But more ominous than that is what I learned on my last trip to Oman. One of these men, whom I know personally, was from a group of the takfir (declaring someone a disbeliever) group there in Jordan. May Allah guide them all. This man remained an outlier among them, so he was arrested and put in prison. His appearance was that of a pious, religious young Muslim. The prison director honored him; in fact, we rarely hear of such character from an employee or a prison director. He honored him and housed him in a private room because he was a shaykh (a scholar or teacher). He is still there in Jordan. In fact, there are many people who are still upon the fitrah (the innate natural disposition), so he honored him and gave him a private room, and allowed his wife to visit him once a week and be alone with him. This is something incredible, but to our great regret, what happened was that he plotted to escape from prison. His wife brought him a sheet, an abaya, and women’s adornments—red and powder. This young man had a beard, so they cut his beard and threw it on the ground. He took that as a means, as many people do today, taking the disease as a means to the cure, as Abu Nuwas said: "And I treated [my ailment] with that which is the disease".
So he shaved his beard, applied powder, dressed in women’s clothing, and threw the sheet [over himself] and exited. None of the guards on the prison corridors, as is known, noticed him, except the last one, who suspected him and arrested him. The story is very sad. The prison director, the one who had honored him, brought him back and lined up the prisoners in a long row and ordered them to spit in his face because he had taken advantage of the goodness of this prison director’s heart. This is a very sad story... Its purpose is only a lesson. Look at what extremism in religion does to its adherent. He believed, along with many or few others, that if a Muslim commits a sin and persists in it, he is a disbeliever. They do not know the difference between disbelief of the heart and practical disbelief, and they contradict many texts from the Book and the Sunnah. Then you find the outcome of this enthusiasm to be weakness and psychological collapse, such that he considers it permissible for himself to shave his beard, even though he knows that shaving it is forbidden (haram). Then he imitates women to escape from prison, while one of the previous prophets, Yusuf (peace be upon him), said . He did nothing except that they invited him to sin, so he preferred prison over being close to that corrupt environment in which one is called to the sin of Allah the Exalted. This is a reminder, and the reminder benefits the believers. Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah.