The Shaykh’s Distinction Between Islam and Faith

The Shaykh : You must know with me that there is Islam and there is faith. Islam encompasses practical rulings, while faith pertains to matters of the heart. The disbeliever is the one who declares his disbelief with his tongue and fights the caller to Islam, but the hypocrite displays Islam and says, "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," yet in his heart he is a denier and a disbeliever. He is, as the Exalted said, in the lowest depth of the Fire on the Day of Resurrection.
So when we find a ruler who is negligent in applying the rulings of the Shari'ah, whether greatly or slightly, but we find that he preserves the prayer, for example, it is not permissible to declare him a disbeliever. Why? Because we have not heard from him any denial of Islam or of some of the rulings of Islam that he lived through for a long time. For that reason, Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) said in his interpretation of the previously mentioned verse: He said in its interpretation: "Disbelief less than disbelief, disbelief less than disbelief." The verse, as the Imam of the Mufassirun, Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, explains in his famous tafsir, was revealed concerning the Jews and the Christians who judge by what Allah has revealed, meaning by the Shari'ah of Islam.