If the heirs say, “We are not satisfied with the oaths of the one against whom we have made our claim, for whoever dares to commit murder will also dare to swear an oath and will not care,” we say: in that case, his blood money is paid from the public treasury. This is what the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, did when the relatives of the slain man said, “We are not satisfied with the oaths of the Jews,” who were disbelievers. So the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, paid his blood money himself (1). But if the defendant swears and the claimants are satisfied, he is absolved.

His statement, “the defendant swears”: does “the defendant” here apply generally, including both one person and several? Yes, it does; however, it is a general expression intended to refer to a particular case, because the qasāmah procedure is valid only against one person. Thus, it is not possible for us to claim against two people and say, “These two killed our deceased relative,” because the wording of the hadith is: “against one man among them.” Therefore, the qasāmah procedure is conducted only when there is a single defendant.

Strangely, some scholars held that the qasāmah procedure is conducted only when there is more than one defendant—the opposite of this case. They said: because qasāmah is between tribes; thus, if a claim is made against one person, we say that there is no qasāmah, just as in other claims.

If someone were to say: Let us treat it like other claims: if the claim is made against one person, we conduct the qasāmah procedure against him; and if it is made against two or more, we conduct it against them, for it is possible for the claimants to allege that two people killed him acting in concert.