His statement, “The oaths are to begin with the men”: this wording is highly misleading, for its apparent sense is that both men and women swear, but that the men’s oaths are to come first. That is not the case: women have no role in the qasāmah procedure. This possible misunderstanding is dispelled by his words, “they are to swear fifty oaths,” for the pronoun is masculine.

For example, if the deceased victim is survived by two sons and a daughter, their shares are calculated on the basis of five portions: the daughter is entitled to ten oaths and the two sons to forty. Do we then say that each son swears twenty-five oaths, or that each son swears twenty oaths?

The answer is the first: this is why he said, “they are to swear,” meaning the males. Women, however, have no role in it.

If the slain person has one son and ten daughters, the son alone swears fifty oaths, because the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Fifty men among you are to swear.” (1)

If the slain person has three sons, each of them swears sixteen oaths, and the fraction is rounded up, since an oath cannot be divided. Thus, the total number of their oaths will be fifty-one, and there is no objection to this.

If someone were to ask, “Why do you not select two of them by lot to swear?”

The answer is that drawing lots has no place in oaths; therefore, rounding up the fraction is unavoidable.