Book of Assault and the Liability of Rulers

A person is entitled to ward off any aggressor who attacks his life, limb, chastity, or property. If, in the course of defense, he kills the aggressor, he bears no liability. Defending property is not mandatory, whereas defending chastity is. The same duty applies when a life is threatened by a non-Muslim or a vicious animal—but not, on the preponderant view, when the assailant is a Muslim. Shielding another person is treated the same as shielding oneself, though one opinion deems it unequivocally obligatory.

If a falling jar cannot be deflected except by breaking it, he must pay for it according to the sounder position. An aggressor must be repelled with the least harmful means: if words and a call for help suffice, striking is forbidden; if a shove with the hand suffices, using a whip is forbidden; if a whip suffices, a staff is forbidden; and if disabling a limb suffices, killing is forbidden. When escape is possible, the authoritative view makes flight obligatory and combat unlawful.

If the aggressor bites his hand, he should free it by the easiest method—prying the jaws apart or striking the cheeks. Should that fail and he must pull away, causing the aggressor’s teeth to be dislodged, no compensation is owed. Likewise, if someone deliberately peers into the privacy of another’s home through a window or hole, and the occupant throws something light, such as a pebble, blinding him—or strikes near his eye, wounding him until he dies—there is no liability, provided the women observed are neither the onlooker’s wife nor a woman who is his maḥram. Some jurists add the conditions that the women were in seclusion and that the intruder was first warned.

When a guardian, governor, husband, or teacher administers a discretionary punishment (taʿzīr), he is liable for resulting harm. By contrast, no liability attaches to a fixed ḥadd punishment. According to the sound position, flogging a drinker with sandals or garments entails no liability, as do the prescribed forty lashes, which is the well-known view. If the lashes exceed forty, compensation is required proportionate to the excess; another opinion fixes half the full blood money (diyyah). These two views likewise apply to a slanderer who is given eighty-one lashes instead of the prescribed eighty.

There is no liability for excising a fleshy growth unless the operation is feared to be dangerous while leaving it is not, or the surgery itself is riskier than leaving it. A father or grandfather may authorize such removal for a child or an insane person—even with some danger—so long as the danger of leaving it is greater; this license is not granted to the ruler in that situation. Both a guardian and the ruler may authorize removal when no danger exists, and they may permit bloodletting or cupping. Should the patient die from any of these permissible procedures, the sounder view is that no liability arises.