Warning Against Declaring Sinners Disbelievers

The Shaykh : And worse than that is the one who is lax in declaring people disbelievers when they commit any of the sins. Many people—may Allah guide us and them—say, "So-and-so is a disbeliever." Why? Because he said such-and-such or did such-and-such, even though this statement or action does not take him out of Islam and does not make him a disbeliever. Let the one who says this know—I mean the one who declares people disbelievers for what Allah and His Messenger did not declare them disbelievers for—that if he declares them disbelievers, and if the person addressed with the charge of disbelief is deserving of it, then he has earned what he was described with; otherwise, he is not deserving of it, for the disbelief returns to the one who said it, and he becomes the disbeliever, may Allah protect us from that, as it is established from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). Then it is obligatory for us to know that a man may say a word of disbelief and may do an act of disbelief, but he does not become a disbeliever because of it due to the presence of a preventer among the preventers.