Chapter: The Prescribed Penalty for Highway Robbers

Highway robbers are those who confront people with weapons, whether in the open desert or within inhabited areas, and seize their property openly rather than by stealth.

Whoever among them kills—whether his victim is a legal equal or not, such as a child, a slave, or a dhimmī—and also takes the property is to be executed and then crucified until his crime becomes publicly known.

If he kills but does not take any property, he is certainly put to death, yet he is not crucified.

Should they commit an offense that requires retaliation for an injury to a limb, that retaliation must be carried out.

If each of them seizes an amount of property that, were a thief to take it, would entail amputation, and they have killed no one, then the right hand and left foot of every one of them are cut off in a single session, the stumps are cauterized, and he is thereafter released.

If they neither kill a person nor take property equalling the minimum amount for the theft penalty, they are banished: they are to be driven about and not allowed to settle in any town.

Whoever repents among them before being apprehended is absolved of everything that is Allah’s right—banishment, amputation, crucifixion, and mandatory execution—while he remains answerable for human rights concerning life, limb, and property, unless he is pardoned for those.

And if anyone—whether human or beast—launches an assault against a person, his inviolability, or his property, that person has the right to repel