the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace.
(The Mingling of Good and Evil Deeds)
This is why we said that no sin on the part of a believing servant is ever entirely unmingled with an act of obedience, namely his believing that it is a sin. He is among those who “mingled a good deed with another that was evil” [al-Tawbah 9:102]. God said, “It may be that God will turn to them.”
Repentance means returning. The meaning here is that He will turn to them with mercy, for He, exalted is He, completed the verse with His words, “God is Forgiving, Merciful.” The scholars said that when God says “it may be,” it is certain to come about, for nothing can prevent Him.
(Uttering One’s Faith and the Appearance of Its Effect)
We now return to our subject. Since faith is the very purity of the inward self, it was impossible to conceive of a disagreement about it as one can conceive of disagreement about outward purity, except in a subtle respect. In this respect the ruling of the outward aspect in inward purity corresponds to the ruling of the inward aspect in outward purity.
In this respect we ask whether the purity of the inward self through faith is conditional upon giving utterance to it, with the tongue voicing what the heart believes. If someone does not make his inward belief manifest, would he then be a hypocrite in the unseen world, just as an outward hypocrite is in the visible world?
A believer, for example, holds prayer to be obligatory, yet fails to pray or purify himself. A hypocrite prays and purifies himself, yet neither believes in his heart nor holds that these acts are obligatory upon him, or does not perform them on the authority of the messenger who prescribed them for him. This is what it means when you examine the matter carefully, so that the ruling applies throughout the outward
Notes
Translator’s note TN1360-1: The question of inward purity asks whether faith in the heart requires an outward utterance. It mirrors the question of outward purification, in which an outward act may require inward intention.
