Book of the Ḥadd for Slander

The ḥadd (legal punishment) for the slanderer is imposed only when two conditions are met: legal responsibility, except that the drunkard is punished despite his temporary loss of capacity, and the act must be voluntary. A discerning minor is disciplined with discretionary chastisement, not the ḥadd, and no liability is incurred for slandering one’s own child, however remote the descent.

The free offender is lashed eighty times, while the slave receives forty. The person slandered must be muḥṣan—legally chaste—a requirement already detailed in the chapter on liʿān.

If fewer than four witnesses testify to fornication, they are flogged according to the sounder opinion; the same ruling, according to the school, applies when the four witnesses are all women, slaves, or unbelievers. By contrast, if a single witness reports that the accused confessed, no ḥadd is enforced.

When two individuals slander one another, their punishments are not offset. Should the slandered party attempt to execute the punishment himself, it has no legal effect.