[A Note on the Error of Some Contemporaries]
Know — may Allāh have mercy on you — that ruling by other than what Allāh has revealed, as has already been explained, falls into two states:
❖ The first: That the Sharīʿah is completely set aside and replaced by another law, or that the ruling of Allāh is rejected and denied, or that something else is preferred over it.
These actions are kufr in themselves. Here kufr is an inherent description of the act itself, whether it occurs once or many times.
❖ The second: That the ruler turns away in a particular judgment from the ruling of Allāh due to personal desire or in pursuit of some worldly benefit, while the reference of judgment with him remains the Sharīʿah.
This is from the category of sins and acts of disobedience.
It does not change from being a sin even if its doer repeats it hundreds of times.
The repetition of a sin increases its weight in the scale; it does not transform it from the category of sin into the category of kufr — just as drinking alcohol many times does not turn it into kufr, and consuming ribā repeatedly does not take it out of the category of sins, and so on.
Once this is firmly understood, you will recognise the error of those who claim that ruling by other than what Allāh has revealed is not kufr if it occurs once or twice, then becomes kufr when it becomes frequent and repeated.
If the speaker intends by this the second state, then he has erred in thinking that frequency turns this type into kufr.
What is originally a sin remains a thousand sins of the same kind even if repeated a thousand times; they do not combine to produce a kufr that was not present in the essence of the act itself.
And if his intention by “that which becomes kufr with frequency” is the first type — which is denial, replacement, or legislation besides Allāh — then his error is even greater.
For this type is kufr in itself; it does not require repetition for its description to be complete.
It is not said of it: “He does not become a kāfir if it occurs once.” Rather, it is kufr in the single occurrence just as it is in the tenth.
This distinction based on frequency and rarity is nothing but a forced and artificial approach.
Its proponent wanted to take a middle position between the statement of Ibn ʿAbbās (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhumā) regarding “kufr dûnâ kufr” and the madhhâb of the Khawārij who make takfīr for oppression even if it occurs only once.
He thought the way out of the difficulty was to set for the sin a ceiling of repetition, which, if reached, turns it into kufr.
By doing so he avoided agreeing with the Khawārij in the first occurrence, yet agreed with them in the end result when the act becomes frequent!
He did not realise that a sin never turns into kufr merely by the accumulation of its number, no matter how many times it is repeated, until something that is kufr in itself is joined to it.
At that point it becomes kufr even in the very first occurrence — not because it became frequent, but because its reality has changed.
And Allāh is the One who grants success.
