Chapter on the ḥadd for Qadhf

The jurists define qadhf as hurling an accusation of zina (fornication/adultery) or liwat (sodomy). In its original, literal sense the term means “to throw forcefully,” but by convention it came to denote casting such accusations.

Qadhf is prohibited by the Quran, the Sunnah, and unanimous scholarly agreement.

Allah, the Exalted, says: “Those who accuse chaste women and then fail to produce four witnesses—lash them with eighty lashes, and never accept their testimony thereafter, for such people are sinful” (24:4).

This, then, is the slanderer’s immediate worldly punishment: eighty lashes, rejection of his testimony, and his being deemed a wicked, debased transgressor so long as he cannot prove what he alleged.

As for his punishment in the Hereafter, Allah—Mighty and Majestic—has clarified it: “Indeed, those who accuse chaste, unsuspecting, believing women are cursed in this world and the Hereafter; for them is a tremendous torment, on the Day when their tongues, their hands, and their feet will bear witness against them for what they used to do. On that Day Allah will repay them in full with the just recompense they deserve, and they will come to know that Allah alone is the Manifest Truth” (24:23-25).

The Prophet ﷺ said, “Avoid the seven destructive sins,” and he counted among them “slandering chaste, unsuspecting, believing women.”

Accordingly, Allah has prescribed a deterrent ḥadd for the slanderer: whenever a legally accountable person, acting of his own volition, accuses a chaste individual of zina or liwat, he is to be whipped eighty lashes, in accordance with the Divine statement: