What is the difference between declaring something permissible and acknowledging it?

The questioner : What is the difference between acknowledging and declaring permissible?

The Shaykh : There is a very great difference. Acknowledging is when one sees a thing and acknowledges it in reality, but deep in his heart he may not have accepted what he acknowledged. For example, the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): So if a wrong occurs before him and he does not refute it with his hand or with his tongue, then it can be said that outwardly he has acknowledged it... Yes... In the name of Allah.


The questioner : What is the difference between acknowledging and declaring permissible? And is a specific person judged as a disbeliever in both cases after the proof has been established? This is a continuation of the previous question.

The Shaykh : We said that disbelief is of two types: doctrinal disbelief and practical disbelief. As for doctrinal disbelief, there is no way to know it except by the person who committed the disbelief expressing his disbelief with his tongue. As for judging a person based on an action he performed that is described as disbelief in the Shari'ah, this does not necessitate that we describe him as an inner disbeliever just as he is an outward disbeliever. I was just speaking about the expression for the saved sect and the victorious group, which is the phrase commonly used today and for hundreds of years: the people of the Sunnah and the community. I was speaking about how Islam, in its perfection, came to rectify both the outward and the inward. Islam did not come only to rectify the inward without the outward; rather, it concerned itself with rectifying both. The reason for this is very clear to one who pays special attention to following many of the rulings of the Shari'ah that specify the connection of the inward to the outward and the connection of the outward to the inward. For example, the hadith of al-Nu'man ibn Bashir, which is agreed upon by al-Bukhari and Muslim,The Shaykh : which is a hadith of some length, and in it the Messenger (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him) said: And as also came in the authentic collections, it was the practice of the Prophet (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him and his family) when he stood to lead his Companions in prayer that he would order them to straighten their rows and threaten them and frighten them lest they neglect any part of straightening the rows, such as his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): So the difference in straightening the rows is an outward matter that the wise Shari'ah considered a cause for the difference of hearts. Therefore, the outward is connected to the inward, and this is a reality for which there are many proofs from the Islamic Shari'ah, from the Book and the Sunnah. And what I want to arrive at is that words must be attended to because they are among the outward matters, and we should not say, as some ignorant people say: "My brother, the criterion is what is in the heart." No, we heard just now that if the heart is sound, the body is sound; if the inward is sound, the outward is sound; if the outward is sound, the outward is sound. Glory to the One who connected the outward to the inward, for each of them supports the other in a wonderful and very strange way. You do not know whether the heart is rectified before the outward or the outward before the inward; they are completely intertwined. The point is that we want to say that disbelief may be verbal and may be of the heart. Among the famous hadiths regarding verbal disbelief without heart disbelief is what came in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him) with a sound chain from Abdullah ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him and him) that the Prophet (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him and his family) delivered a sermon to his Companions one day, and a man from among his Companions stood up to say to him: "What Allah wills and what you will, O Messenger of Allah. What Allah wills and what you will." So the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) became angry and said: And in the other hadith: The point in both hadiths is that when the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) addressed the first man with his saying: But the Messenger of Allah (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him and his family) knew that this Companion did not believe in Allah and His Messenger except to escape from shirk, but he did not pay attention to the bad wording and bad expression that indicates that the will of Allah is coupled with the will of the Messenger of Allah, or that the will of the Messenger of Allah is coupled with the will of Allah. If a person believed this, he would be a disbeliever without doubt, but this meaning did not occur to his mind. Therefore, the Prophet (may Allah's prayer and peace be upon him) was content with verbal refutation, because the man only fell into verbal disbelief and did not fall into heart disbelief. Therefore, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was content to refute him verbally.
Therefore, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was content to refute him verbally. The man who saw that dream in which the Messenger said to him: He said, addressing his Companions whom he used to hear saying this phrase, that he was shy of them. If he had known that they were saying it intending its meaning, which is shirk itself, he would not have been shy of them.