The saying of the Prophet, sallallahu ^alayhi wa sallam: <<A person may utter a) blasphemous (word that one thinks harmless), i.e., he thinks it holds no harm for him, (which results), i.e., due to his uttering it, (in one’s falling the depth of seventy years into Hellfire.>> This falling distance of seventy (70) years leads to the) very (bottom of Hellfire where only blasphemers will reside,) as pointed to in the religious texts. (This hadith was related by at-Tirmidhiyy[1]) in his Jami^ (who classified it as a hasan hadith.) The two shaykhs, (al-Bukhariyy[2] and Muslim[3] related a hadith with a similar meaning). The hadith’s text is: <<A person may say a word that he does not take heed of, by which he slips into Hellfire farther than what is between east and west.>> The hadith narrated by at-Tirmidhiyy explains the hadith narrated by al-Bukhariyy and Muslim. (The hadith is an evidence that it is not a condition for a person to fall into blasphemy that one must have learned the judgment of the uttered blasphemous words) because the Prophet ruled that the one who says a blasphemous word will be tortured in the bottom of Hellfire even though he thought what he said was harmless, meaning that he was not aware that what he said was blasphemy. Hence, it is known that whoever says blasphemous words while knowing their meaning, blasphemes—whether or not he is aware that saying such words is blasphemy (Nor) is it a condition for the person to fall into blasphemy (that one must have liked), i.e., been pleased or happy with, what he was saying, (or believed their meaning). Whoever says blasphemous words intentionally blasphemes, even if he does not believe in the meaning of the words he spoke. For example, the one who calls another, “O son of God,” blasphemes even if he does not believe that Allah has a son.
[1] Narrated by atTirmidhiyy in his Sunan in Kitab azZuhud in the chapter pertaining to the one who spoke a word to make the people laugh.
[2] Narrated by alBukhariyy in his Sahih in the book arRiqaq in the chapter of Protecting the Tongue.
[3] Narrated by Muslim in his Sahih in the book AzZuhud and arRaqa’iq in the chapter of Uttering a Word which Results in his Falling into Hellfire.