The Murji’ah in Brief

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

The Murji’ah were an early sect.  Their eponymous key tenet of irja’, lexically denotes “postponement”, takhir, because they “deferred” the requital of transgressions to the Day of Judgement.  It is imperative to differentiate the position of this sect from that of certain early companions and followers who, responding to the conditions of their time, forbade engaging the bitter contemporaneous political struggles.  In that vein, they recommended “deferring” the case of grave sinners to Allah (s.w.t.), Who will Punish or Forgive them as He Wills on the Day of Judgement. 

In the subsequent period, however, there emerged the Murji’ah, who took this notion of deferral to its limit and made it a point of doctrine.  They, thus, held that sin does not spoil faith much like obedience does not benefit disbelief, that is, that the believer remains a believer no matter the enormities of sins he commits, just as the disbeliever remains a disbeliever no matter the righteous deeds he works.  They held that iman, faith, pertains to private beliefs, and that one who pronounces kufr, unbelief, with his tongue and worships idols or practically adheres to Judaism or Christianity, for instance, worshipping the cross or pronouncing Trinitarian doctrine, in the lands of Islam, and thereafter dies without recanting these practices, can yet be a believer of unaffected or complete faith in the Sight of Allah (s.w.t.). 

While the Khwarij grossly conflated iman and ‘amal, the Murji’ah radically separated them.  The correct position is that the relation between faith and action is one of union but not absolute identity, as with the Khwarij and distinction; but not absolute disjunction, as with the Murji’ah.