and burning down the shops in which wine is sold, destroying books that promote zandaqa (heresy) and atheism, eradicating licentious films, three-dimensional images and statuary, and the like.

Second: alteration. This includes, for example, breaking counterfeit coins, re-working curtains that bear images, or turning them into cushions and the like.

Third: transfer of ownership. Examples are the case of someone who steals dates that are still hanging on the palm, or the case of adulterated saffron that is given away in charity; such items may be confiscated and then donated, either in kind or after being sold and their price given in charity.

Scholarly disagreement
The majority of scholars—including the four Imams—hold that discretionary punishment by seizing wealth is impermissible. Some of them explained away the reports that mention financial penalties by claiming they were abrogated: the ruling was valid at the beginning of Islam and was later repealed. They further argued that allowing this form of punishment would give unjust rulers and governors a pretext to appropriate people’s property without right.

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah and his disciple Ibn al-Qayyim, however, maintained that financial taʿzīr is permissible whenever the authorities deem that it secures the public interest, restrains the wrongdoers, and curbs evil. The field of taʿzīr is broad: its lowest level is verbal reprimand, its highest is execution when no lesser measure will halt the harm, and confiscating wealth is one of the many intermediate forms that achieve deterrence.

The two shaykhs flatly rejected the claim of abrogation, citing numerous precedents that confirm the continued validity of financial penalties. Ibn Taymiyyah said: “Those who allege abrogation possess no Sharʿī proof—neither from the Book nor from the Sunnah. On the foundational position of Aḥmad it is permissible, for his companions never differed over the fact that financial penalties have not all been abrogated.”