Who were the Murji'ah, and does faith (īmān) increase and decrease?

The Murji'ah held that īmān is belief in the heart (or belief plus statement) alone, that actions are not part of it, and that it neither increases nor decreases — so that sins do not diminish a person's faith. Ahl al-Sunnah hold that īmān is statement, action, and belief: it increases with obedience and decreases with disobedience, as Allah describes the believers whose faith is increased when His verses are recited to them (Qur'an 8:2) and upon whom He sent tranquillity 'that they might increase in faith along with their faith' (48:4). That īmān is composite — and so admits of more and less — is clear from the Prophet's ﷺ words, 'Faith consists of more than sixty branches, and modesty (ḥayā') is a branch of faith' (Bukhārī 9); and he ﷺ explicitly counted deeds as faith when he told the delegation of ʿAbd al-Qays that 'faith in Allah alone' meant the testimony, establishing the prayer, paying zakāh, fasting Ramaḍān, and giving the khums (Bukhārī 53). At the same time, against the Khawārij, Ahl al-Sunnah affirm that major sin does not expel a Muslim from Islam: whoever said lā ilāha illā Allāh with an atom's weight of good in his heart will ultimately be brought out of the Fire (Bukhārī 44). Note honestly that many later Ashʿarī and Māturīdī/Ḥanafī scholars held actions to be a condition of īmān's completeness rather than part of its essence; Ibn Taymiyyah and others treated much of that dispute as largely verbal, unlike the doctrinal Murji'ah who removed action from religion altogether.

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