Excusing the Ignorant Even in Shirk: Abū Wāqid and Dhāt Anwāṭ

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

A second point of theology, glossed over the first time: the genuinely ignorant may be excused even for major shirk and kufr. If a person believes himself a Muslim and wills to submit, yet falls into blatant shirk without knowing it is shirk, Allāh may forgive him for his ignorance (jahl).

❧Abū Wāqid al-Laythī and Dhāt Anwāṭ

On the march out of Makkah to Ḥunayn, Abū Wāqid, a Muslim of barely a day, who had memorized no Qurʾān and studied no ʿaqīdah, saw the idolaters' talismanic tree on which they hung their weapons for luck, and asked, "Yā RasūlAllāh, make for us a Dhāt Anwāṭ as they have." This is major kufr, a request for another idol. The Prophet ﷺ answered that they had said exactly what Banū Isrāʾīl said to Mūsā after their rescue: اجْعَل لَّنَا إِلَٰهًا كَمَا لَهُمْ آلِهَةٌ, "make for us a god as they have gods." Yet he did not tell Abū Wāqid to renew his shahādah or declare him an apostate, because he was a brand-new Muslim who knew no better.

❧Aṣl al-īmān versus aṣl al-kufr

The root of īmān is the will to submit to Allāh and His Messenger; the root of kufr is the refusal to submit, as Iblīs أَبَىٰ وَاسْتَكْبَرَ, "refused and grew arrogant." One who wishes to submit but is ignorant of what he must submit to is not condemned for that ignorance, he must be taught, gently and with wisdom, as the Prophet ﷺ taught Abū Wāqid. Hence the modern examples: the person who says "all good people go to Jannah whatever they believe," or who says a forbidden orientation "is no big deal", the statement itself is kufr al-akbar, for legitimizing the ḥarām is kufr even though committing the ḥarām is only ḥarām. But the ignorant Muslim who says such a thing, with aṣl al-īmān in his heart, is not thereby cast out; he is corrected, not condemned.