“Those who accuse chaste women and then fail to produce four witnesses—lash them with eighty lashes.”

The purport of this noble verse is that whoever hurls an allegation of fornication against free, chaste, sane women and then cannot bring four witnesses to substantiate it must be flogged eighty lashes. Whether the person slandered is male or female makes no difference; women are mentioned only because of the specific incident that occasioned the revelation and because slandering women is more shocking and, unfortunately, more common.

The slanderer deserves this punishment in order to safeguard the honor of Muslims from defilement, to curb tongues from uttering those vile words that tarnish the reputation of the innocent, and to protect the Muslim community from the spread of indecency.

The muḥṣan whose slander obligates the ḥadd is the free, Muslim, sane, chaste individual who is physically capable of sexual intercourse.

Ibn Rushd said, “The scholars unanimously agree that five qualities must be present in the person slandered: adulthood, freedom, chastity, Islam, and the possession of the sexual organ. If any one of these conditions is absent, the ḥadd is not due.”

The ḥadd for slander is the personal right of the one maligned; it is waived by his pardon and is not carried out unless he demands it. If he forgives the slanderer, the ḥadd is dropped, though the offender is still subject to a discretionary punishment to deter him from persisting in this forbidden slander, for which the Qur’an threatens curse and painful torment.

Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah said, “By unanimous agreement, the slanderer is not subjected to the ḥadd unless the slandered party demands it.”