A question about the meaning of practical disbelief and creedal disbelief, and giving examples that clarify the difference between them?

The questioner : In the authentic hadith, the man who willed his sons to burn him—what type of disbelief is his?

The Shaykh : What type? Do you mean...?

The questioner : Practical disbelief.

The Shaykh : No, it is creedal disbelief, but it is disbelief due to heedlessness; because the hadith says: .

Another questioner: Peace be upon you.

The Shaykh: And upon you peace.
He said: . The man died, they burned him, they took the ashes, and scattered them with the gale and with the surging sea. Then Allah (Mighty and Majestic) said to his particles: "Be so-and-so."

The questioner: Glory be to Allah!

The Shaykh : So he became a normal human being. He said (Glorified and Exalted is He): I was afraid of You. . This is due to the horror of the punishment he imagined, coupled with his admission that if Allah punished him, it would be due to his own deficiency, which caused fear and awe to arise in him, and disbelief came out of him, so Allah forgave him.
The Shaykh: And this hadith, in reality, is also something by which the "Group of Takfir" is refuted, as well as what the scholars call the people of the period of ignorance (fatra). Not everyone who disbelieves is subject to the ruling of disbelief; rather, his situation must be studied. If he knew that he had disbelieved and the argument was established against him, and then he persisted in his disbelief and misguidance, then he is the disbeliever who will remain in the Fire forever. He and those like him are the ones intended by the previous verse: . As for the sinner who commits a sin that contains disbelief in Allah, we should not rush to declare him a disbeliever; rather, it is our duty to warn him.
The Shaykh: We read in the hadith of Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him), for example, that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) delivered a sermon to the Companions one day, and one of them stood up and said: "What Allah wills and what you will, O Messenger of Allah." He said: . We can say it is disbelief, but he did not disbelieve; why? We can say it is disbelief because the Messenger said to him: But we cannot say it is disbelief because he did not treat him as a disbeliever. If he had treated him as a disbeliever, he would have summoned him to stand before him and asked him to repent; if he repented, well and good, otherwise he would be killed. And he would have renewed the contract with his wife if he had, what? Disbelieved with the disbelief of apostasy. But no; this was not disbelief. What did he do? He uttered the word of disbelief, but merely for a Muslim to utter the word of disbelief while not meaning disbelief in his heart does not make him a disbeliever. For this reason, the people of knowledge and verification from the group of Tawhid divide disbelief into two and two; four categories, two and two. The first division: practical disbelief and creedal disbelief. The second division: verbal disbelief and heart-based disbelief.
The Shaykh: Heart-based disbelief corresponds to creedal disbelief, and practical disbelief corresponds to verbal disbelief. So if a person utters the word of disbelief, that does not mean we should immediately lump him in with the disbelievers without knowing what he intended by this word. Take the common example today, especially in these lands where—regrettably—there have never been callers to Tawhid. The callers to Tawhid were confined to the boundaries of Saudi Arabia in the past. Here, and in Syria, and in Egypt, swearing by other than Allah is like drinking water. Well, a person swears by his father's head at the slightest opportunity, or swears by his honor, or swears by his mustache, and he may not even have a mustache! The point is, the Messenger said: . So what ruling do we pass on these people that they are disbelievers? The answer is: No, detail is necessary. The detail revolves around this secondary division we mentioned: What do you mean, my brother, when you say: "By the life of my father's head," "By the life of the Bedouin," "By the life of the Prophet," and so on? By Allah, I do not mean anything; it is just a linguistic habit running on the tongue. Yes, a linguistic habit, my brother; stay away from it, because the Messenger said so and so. But there are people who indicate that their swearing is creedal disbelief itself. This exists. I do not yet know these lands well, or know their customs, traditions, ideas, and beliefs. In Syria, if you have a right against a person and they deny it, they swear false oaths by Allah, and place their hand on the mushaf saying you have nothing with them. You must make them swear an oath at the grave of Master So-and-So, and he will deliver to you the right that you have with him.

The questioner: Allah is the Greatest!

The Shaykh : He does not swear by Master So-and-So; because he fears him more than he fears his Lord. Because if he swears falsely by Master So-and-So, he fears he will come at night and beat him; that is what we mean in Levantine expressions. But the Lord of the worlds, he is not afraid of Him. This is creedal disbelief. Meanwhile, the masses of people swear verbal oaths, so we do not declare them disbelievers, but we advise them; as the Messenger (peace be upon him) did with the Companions, and as the Companions responded to him (peace be upon him). They do not finish like our group, who say to you: "My brother, leave it, his intention is good!" What do you mean, leave it, his intention is good?! One day, he (peace and blessings be upon him) heard 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) swearing by his father, according to his habit in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance. So he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: What was 'Umar's position? Not the position of our group. He said: "By Allah, I did not swear by other than Allah after that, whether intentionally or by mention." "By mention" means from himself, "intentionally" from others; that is it, do not swear by other than Allah. Do not swear by other than Allah. in the other hadith, and in a wording: .
The Shaykh: Why is swearing by other than Allah shirk?
The Shaykh: Because the custom of people, upon which they were created, is that they do not swear except by what is sacred to them. Therefore, you find him swearing by the Prophet, because the Prophet is revered in his eyes. You find him swearing by his son, because his son is dear to him. He swears by everything dear to him. The Muslim has nothing dearer to him than his Lord (Blessed and Exalted is He). Therefore, the one who prefers swearing by Allah to swearing by other than Allah has made him a partner with Allah. This type of shirk, unfortunately, is not known by most Muslims. What do Muslims know about shirk? What the people of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance knew. The people of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance knew that shirk is for one of them to believe that there is a creator with Allah. This is shirk. And in their state, they were not falling into this shirk; because the clear Qur'an says: . So His saying (Glorified and Exalted is He): Here is the secret, and here is the ignorance in the first pre-Islamic age of ignorance and in the ignorance of the twentieth century today. And it is not among the disbelievers, but among the Muslims; because shirk is like tawhid. Tawhid has three categories, and shirk has three categories corresponding to them.
The Shaykh: Tawhid al-rububiyyah (oneness of lordship), which is that you make another god with Allah, as came in the hadith of Ibn Mas'ud in "the two Sahihs": ; meaning a partner in creation. This is the greatest of major sins. Tawhid al-rububiyyah corresponds to shirk in lordship. An example is the Zoroastrians who believe that there is a creator of good and a creator of evil. Therefore, he (peace be upon him) said: ; because they believe that man creates evil and our Lord creates good. So this is shirk in lordship. Tawhid al-rububiyyah is the first thing a Muslim must believe in, and this is easy, and man is created upon it, even the disbelievers in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance, as you heard, used to declare the oneness of Allah in lordship. And it came in "Sahih Muslim" that in their misguidance in the pre-Islamic age of ignorance, they used to circumambulate the Ka'bah naked, women and men. Until the woman who had a little remaining modesty, a modesty of shame, but ignorance and customs and traditions blind the hearts. Look today, you Muslims, men and women, on the morning of the festival, where are you going? Instead of going to the mosque, you go to the graves. You go back and forth and find... people prostrating at the graves. And these were the ones who used to circumambulate the Ka'bah naked, women and men. So one of the women would say, pointing to her private parts:
"Today some of it or all of it is exposed, *** So what is exposed of it, I do not make it lawful."
And during this tawaf, they would say: "Labbaik Allahumma labbaik, labbaik la sharika laka illa sharikan tamlakuhu wa ma malak." Who is this partner? "A partner you own and what He owns!" They believed in tawhid al-rububiyyah (oneness of lordship), holding that there is no creator besides Allah, but where did their shirk (associating partners with Allah) come from? There are two types; the first, as we said, is tawhid al-rububiyyah. The second type is tawhid al-uluhiyyah (oneness of worship), also called tawhid al-'ibadah. This means that you, O servant, as long as you believe that Allah is the One who created you and gave you form, He is the One who deserves that you direct all your worship to Him. Here, the disbelievers—Quraish and those who followed their religion—denied this tawhid. They worshipped other deities alongside Allah. And this, too, as narrated in the Qur'an, He related their belief in lordship and their disbelief in oneness of worship: , "And those who took protectors other than Allah, they worship them, not [worshipping] Allah. If you say to them, 'Why do you worship them other than Allah?' they say: ." So this is their admission that they worship their protectors, not for their own sake, but as a means to bring them closer to Allah. Thus, they disbelieved in tawhid al-uluhiyyah or tawhid al-'ibadah. Therefore, our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) also related from them that He said: , , meaning they made the worshipped objects a single worshipped entity; , . And our Lord said in another verse: .
The calamity is doubled when we realize that the disbelievers understood the meaning of "La ilaha illa Allah" (There is no deity but Allah), but they did not submit to it. Whereas many of the ignorant Muslims today do not understand the meaning of "La ilaha illa Allah." Therefore, there is no arrogance, but rather ignorance. "La ilaha illa Allah" means there is no worshipped entity with truth in existence except Allah. Did the Muslims fulfill the right of this word, the word of tawhid? After they believed in tawhid al-rububiyyah, did they believe in tawhid al-uluhiyyah? Unfortunately, they violated it. They violated this type of tawhid. Why? Because they go to the graves of the awliya (close friends of Allah), prophets, and righteous people, and they pray at them, seek aid from them, and seek nearness to Allah through them. If you ask them, they say, "We do not worship them." But they do not say "We do not worship them" out of ignorance, because they understand worship in a narrow sense: that you sit and pray at this grave. No, he does not pray, but he says, "O so-and-so, help me," not knowing that this is prayer and worship of him. He does not know that when he reads in Surat al-Fatihah: , that seeking help from the dead is worship of them. He does not know that this is worship. So if you ask him, "Do you worship other than Allah?" he says to you, "I seek refuge in Allah!" But he is immersed in this misguidance, meaning in the worship of other than Allah. This is also the second tawhid, tawhid al-uluhiyyah or tawhid al-'ibadah.
The third and final tawhid is tawhid al-asma' wa al-sifat (oneness of the names and attributes). You believed that Allah is One in His essence, with no partner in His creation. You believed that Allah is One in His worship, so you do not worship anyone with Him. What remains for you is to believe that He is One in His attributes, just as He is One in His essence and One in His attributes. Do not believe, for example, that among humans, no matter how high one rises or how elevated he is, he raises his head like this to see that... the Preserved Tablet, and he knows today that so-and-so will die wretched, and so-and-so will die happy, and he knows the unseen without Allah (Mighty and Majestic)! And Allah says: . So if you believe that so-and-so the Shaykh knows the unseen, and this is what we hear with our ears from the Sufis, that the Shaykh reveals to us, the Shaykh reveals to us, we are present for the question and have not yet asked it, and the Shaykh gives us the answer without us asking the question! There is shirk in the people's belief in the third part of tawhid, in the names of Allah and His attributes. No one knows the unseen except Allah. There are awliya who know the unseen. So you find one of them does not trade, travel, or get married, or make any move worthy of mention, except after consulting the Shaykh, and the Shaykh reveals to him, he brings out the unseen for him! All of this is disbelief in "La ilaha illa Allah." Why? Because we have not yet understood this tawhid.
We have prolonged this upon you, so please forgive us. And peace be upon you.