These narrations therefore establish the prohibition of swearing by anything other than Allah and declare it an act of shirk. Examples include saying, “By the Prophet,” “By your life,” “By honesty,” “By the Kaʿbah,” and the like.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr remarked, “This is a matter on which there is consensus.”

Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah said, “It is forbidden to swear by anything other than Allah.” He then quoted Ibn Masʿūd: “To swear by Allah while lying is dearer to me than to swear by something else while telling the truth.”

The Shaykh explained Ibn Masʿūd’s statement, saying, “The merit of monotheism is greater than the merit of truthfulness, and the sin of lying is lighter than the sin of shirk.” End quote.

For expiation (kaffārah) to become obligatory when a person swears by Allah and then breaks his oath, three conditions must be fulfilled.

Condition One: the oath must be binding (munʿaqidah), meaning that the swearer consciously intends it concerning some possible matter in the future.

Allah the Exalted says, “Allah will not call you to account for idle talk in your oaths, but He will hold you to account for the oaths you have bound with intention.” ⦗Qur’an 5:89⦘. This verse shows that expiation is required only for binding oaths.

A binding oath pertains exclusively to the future, not the past, because fulfillment or violation can occur only with respect to a future event. If someone swears, deliberately and falsely, about a past matter, that is a