The Shaykh’s warning against the error of dividing the religion into fundamentals and branches in the matter of declaring someone a disbeliever.

The Shaykh: And here, the branches and fundamentals remind me of a matter that our brothers, the students of knowledge, must also be clear about: the division of Islam into branches and fundamentals, into beliefs and jurisprudence and rulings. This is a terminology, and there is no dispute over terminology, just as they divided the science of hadith into various types of hadith sciences, as mentioned in the books of terminology. — Give me a paper, Professor. No. — The division is fine because there is no dispute over terminology, but we should not base legal rulings on these terms. — That is enough. — On these terms, because a term should not change anything of the rulings of the Shari'ah. I want to point out from this that some people have built the following rule on this distinction: "Error in the branches is forgiven, and error in the fundamentals is not forgiven." This is wrong. That is because the accountability in both sections, which are termed as such, is based on intention or lack of intention, as mentioned earlier. If we assume that a person knew a branch of the Shari'ah, that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) established it and ruled upon it, and he knew that, then denied it, this is disbelief. And the exact opposite: if he did not know that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) established a ruling regarding the unseen, and there are many examples regarding the unseen.
We are now living in trials, and their cause goes back to two parts.
One is ignorance of the Shari'ah.
And the other is following desire. We are not concerned with this last part as much as we are concerned with ignorance of Islam.
You must be hearing many discussions taking place between some authors, or some debaters, or lecturers, regarding two beliefs: the descent of 'Isa (peace be upon him) and the emergence of the Mahdi in the end times, and what is connected to them, such as the greater Dajjal, Gog and Magog, and so on. Many, and I do not say students of knowledge, but those who may be known as people of knowledge, deny these two beliefs. So I assume now that the one who denies this or that, if he is aware that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said it, is an apostate, a fortiori. Since we ruled that the first one who denied a branch is an apostate, why? Because he knew and denied. Likewise, a fortiori, we say that this one who denied the belief in the descent of 'Isa (peace be upon him) and the emergence of the Mahdi in the end times, knew that the Messenger (peace be upon him) said it, then denied it, so he is a disbeliever.
Now we reverse the topic. We say: whether it is this example or that example, he denied this or that, and he does not know that the Messenger (peace be upon him) established it, we cannot say that it is disbelief, because we have understood that the meaning of disbelief, in the Shari'ah and in language, is covering the truth. And this person did not know the truth. Therefore, such a person is not declared a disbeliever. When we know this fact, we arrive at a very important result: dividing the Shari'ah into fundamentals and branches, if we stop at the terminology, there is no harm in it. But if we build on it a distinction that this one denied something so he is a disbeliever, and this one denied something and he is not a disbeliever, why? Because that one denied what is termed in the fundamentals, and this one denied what is termed in the branches, and both denied a legal truth by his own admission. So we do not accept this distinction if it leads us to saying there is a distinction, whereas the Wise Lawgiver did not distinguish between them but combined them. Please.