Are actions a condition for the perfection or soundness of faith?

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

Faith for Ahlus-Sunnah (the people of the Sunnah) consists of words and actions: words and actions of the heart and tongue. Words of the heart are conviction and belief and acts of the heart are devotion, love, fear, imploration and many other things which are obligatory according to the scholars’ consensus. Words of the tongue are the verbal professing of the two testimonies of faith and the acknowledgment of their implications.

Finally, actions of the senses are those which can only be done through the senses and these are inseparable from actions of the heart. As a matter of fact, when knowledge and determination are found in the heart, they are reflected by the senses. Thus, the absence of external actions performed by the senses demonstrates the non-existence of actions in the heart. Allaah The Almighty Says (what means):

·        {You will not find a people who believe in Allaah and the Last Day having affection for those who oppose Allaah and His Messenger.} [Quran 58:22]

·        {And if they had believed in Allaah and the Prophet and in what was revealed to him, they would not have taken them as allies.} [Quran 5:81]

It is clear from these two verses that internal and external actions are  inseparable. Once this is acknowledged, it becomes obvious that actions in general are a condition for the soundness of faith. In other words, stopping actions altogether can result in apostasy. This is supported by much evidence, including the verse (what means): {But the hypocrites say, "We have believed in Allaah and in the Messenger, and we obey"; then a party of them turns away after that. And those are not believers.} [Quran 24:47]

Shaykh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah mentioned that in this verse, Allaah The Almighty negates the faith of the person who neglects actions altogether, even if they profess faith with their  tongue. Moreover Ibn Taymiyyah clarified the impossibility of having a believer who firmly believes in their heart that Allaah The Almighty has ordered him to pray, fast, pay Zakah [obligatory charity] and perform Hajj, but spends all their life failing to perform any of these actions. This is truly impossible and is merely hypocrisy and atheism, not sound faith. That is why Allaah The Almighty describes the disbelievers, Saying (what means): {The Day the shin will be uncovered and they are invited to prostration but the disbelievers will not be able, Their eyes humbled, humiliation will cover them. And they used to be invited to prostration while they were sound.} [Quran 68:42-43]

The case when one’s actions are a condition for perfecting faith is when we speak about the extent to which a person observes them whether they are obligations or abstain from them if they are prohibitions. Indeed, whoever drops a specific obligation or commits a particular sin will have their level of faith go down, however it will not be completely destroyed. This is supported by the verse  (what means): {And if two factions among the believers should fight, then make settlement between the two.} [Quran 49:9] In this verse Allaah The Almighty still calls such people “believers,” despite them committing a major sin: fighting each other.

Faith, according to Ahlus-Sunnah, consists of different branches as mentioned by the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, each of which is called faith. Some of these branches are essential for the existence of faith, like the declaration of the two testimonies of faith, whereas others do not affect its existence, they only affect the degree of its perfection, like removing a harmful object from a path. [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

Allaah Knows best.