Chapter on Crimes and Punishments (Hudud)

Hudud (singular: hadd) are the fixed punishments prescribed in the Quran and Sunnah for specific offenses against Allah's limits. They represent the most serious transgressions against the moral and social order of the Muslim community. Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani addresses the hudud with the gravity they deserve, presenting the Maliki school's positions on the conditions for their application, the evidentiary requirements, and the specific penalties.

The offenses subject to hadd penalties are: zina (unlawful sexual intercourse), qadhf (false accusation of zina), sariqah (theft), hirabah (highway robbery/brigandage), ridda (apostasy), and hadd al-khamr (drinking intoxicants). The Maliki school is distinctive in its treatment of some of these, as will be noted.

Zina is established by one of two means: a voluntary, explicit, and specific confession repeated four times (the Maliki school follows the view that four confessions are required, by analogy with the four-witness rule), or the testimony of four adult Muslim male witnesses of unimpeachable character who witnessed the act of penetration directly and simultaneously. The punishment for a free married person (muhsan) is stoning (rajm) until death; for the unmarried free person, one hundred lashes. The Maliki school also adds banishment for one year for the unmarried male. The evidentiary threshold is deliberately near-impossible to achieve, reflecting the principle that the hadd should be averted by any doubt (shubhah).

Qadhf — the false accusation of zina — requires eighty lashes and the permanent rejection of the accuser's testimony unless he repents (tawbah). The accuser escapes punishment if he produces four witnesses or the accused confesses.

Theft (sariqah) triggers the hadd of hand amputation when the stolen property: reaches the nisab (the Maliki threshold is one-quarter dinar of gold or its equivalent), is taken from a secured location (hirz), is not the property of a person to whom the thief has a right of access, and the thief is not in a state of dire need that would legally justify taking. The Maliki school is strict in applying this hadd where evidence is clear, while maintaining the principle that doubts prevent its application.

The Maliki school treats intoxicant consumption as a hadd offense with eighty lashes — a position drawn from the practice of Umar ibn al-Khattab and the consensus of the Companions. The Maliki school extends this to all intoxicants, not only grape wine, as the definition of khamr in the school encompasses anything that intoxicates.

Apostasy (ridda) — the deliberate abandonment of Islam — is treated in the Maliki school as requiring a period of seeking repentance and urging the person to return to Islam (istita'bah) before any punishment is applied. If the person sincerely repents and returns, no punishment is applied. The classical Maliki position for an unrepentant apostate is death, though contemporary scholarly discussion of this ruling in the context of freedom of conscience continues.