“Testimony based on testimony is not accepted except in a matter in which one judge’s written communication to another judge is accepted. Nor may judgment be given on its basis unless the testimony of the original witness is unavailable due to death, illness, or absence at the distance permitting the shortening of prayer. A secondary witness may not testify unless the original witness has asked him to bear witness to it, …”

His statement, “Testimony based on testimony is not accepted except in a matter in which one judge’s written communication to another judge is accepted”: this is the first condition. Thus, for testimony based on testimony to be accepted, it must concern a matter in which one judge’s written communication to another is accepted.

It has previously been stated that a judge’s written communication to another judge applies only to the rights of human beings. As for the rights of Allah, such as prescribed punishments, it is not accepted for one judge to write to another. It was also previously mentioned there that the sounder view is that a judge’s written communication to another judge is valid even in prescribed-punishment cases, and that this was the view preferred by Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah have mercy on him.

Since this matter is subsidiary to that one, the correct view here is likewise that testimony based on testimony is valid in cases involving prescribed punishments and otherwise. Thus, if a man testifies to an accusation of fornication—testifying that so-and-so accused so-and-so of fornication by saying, “You are an adulterer”—and he wishes to have someone else convey this testimony, it is not accepted according to the madhhab, because a judge’s written communication to another judge is not accepted in such a matter. Their evidence is the saying of the Prophet—may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him—“Ward off prescribed punishments in cases of doubt” (1).

However, it has previously been stated in the Book of Prescribed Punishments that there is scholarly criticism regarding this hadith, and that the doubts by which prescribed punishments are to be averted are those in which there is uncertainty as to whether the basis requiring the punishment has been established—not every type of doubt.