from outside your own community, if you are travelling through the land and calamity befalls you.” This exception exists purely out of necessity.

5. Reliable memory. The testimony of a heedless person, or one notorious for frequent lapses and errors, is inadmissible, for his words inspire no confidence and do not create a strong presumption of truth; his statement may simply stem from a mistake. By contrast, the testimony of someone who rarely slips is accepted, because no one is completely free of occasional error.

6. Upright character (ʿadālah). Linguistically the term denotes straightness, coming from ʿadl, the opposite of injustice. In legal usage it means that a person’s religious life is even-keeled and that his words and deeds remain balanced.
   The requirement of uprightness in a witness is established by the Almighty’s words, “from among those witnesses whom you approve,” and by His words, “And call to witness two just men from among yourselves.”
   The majority of scholars state that ʿadālah is a quality over and above mere Islam: it entails performing the obligatory and recommended acts while avoiding the forbidden and the disliked.
   Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH) said, “The rejection of the testimony of one known to be a habitual liar is unanimously agreed upon by the jurists.” He also remarked, “Justice varies with time, place, and community. Within every group, the acceptable witness is simply the one considered just among them; were he found among another group, the standard of justice might appear differently. Only with this approach can judgments among people proceed. Otherwise, if in every community we required that no one testify except someone who fulfills every obligation and shuns every prohibition exactly as the Companions did, all—or nearly all—testimony would collapse.”