“If someone intentionally cuts off a finger, and the victim pardons him for it, then the injury spreads to the hand or proves fatal: if the pardon was granted without compensation, then it is waived; but if the pardon was in return for compensation, he is entitled to the remainder of the blood money.”
His statement, “If someone intentionally cuts off a finger”: the word iṣbaʿ (finger) has ten linguistic forms, collected in the following verse:
Hamzah the word anmulah in three ways; and its third form,
The remaining nine are for iṣbaʿ; conclude with uṣbūʿ.
His statement, “and the victim pardons him for it”: the pronoun in “for it” refers to the severed part; that is, the victim pardons him for this finger.
His statement, “then the injury spreads to the hand or proves fatal”: that is, the wound becomes infected, and the infection spreads to the hand until the hand falls away and is lost entirely; or the wound continues to fester until the person dies.
His statement, “if the pardon was granted without compensation, then it is waived; but if the pardon was in return for compensation, he is entitled to the remainder of the blood money”: that is, is this subsequent spread of the injury subject to liability or not? We say: there are details. If the one granting pardon did so without compensation, saying, “I pardon you freely,” and the injury then spreads to the hand or proves fatal, it is waived, and he is entitled to nothing. This is because his freely granted pardon indicates that he does not wish to take compensation for this offense, and that he is acting voluntarily, seeking the reward of Allah Most High. But if the pardon was in return for compensation—whether that compensation was the blood money or something else—then he is entitled to the remainder of the blood money. In other words, we deduct the amount corresponding to the blood money for the finger, namely one tenth of the blood money, which is ten camels.
An example is where one man intentionally cuts off another man’s finger, and the victim says, “I wish to settle with you.” He then settles with him for the blood money, or for an amount greater or less than it. Thereafter, the injury spreads to the hand and becomes fatal. The author then says: