cases of accusing both an unrelated person and one’s own wife in absolute terms; then He singled the wife out for release through liʿān, while the unrelated person remained subject to the unqualified wording of the verse. The Prophet ﷺ did not impose the ḥadd on Hilāl in regard to Sharīk because Sharīk did not demand it, and—by unanimous agreement—the ḥadd for qadhf is not carried out except by the ruler after a formal claim has been lodged.

The two Imams, al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad, held that if a husband accuses his wife of adultery with a particular man and then performs liʿān, the ḥadd is waived both with respect to the wife and to the man he named, whether or not he explicitly mentions that man during the liʿān. The rationale is that liʿān constitutes evidence on one side, and therefore serves as evidence on the other, just like sworn witness testimony. If the husband refuses to perform liʿān, each of the two—the wife and the man she was accused of seeing—has the right to demand the ḥadd; whichever of them presses the claim will have the ḥadd executed on his or her behalf alone, while it is not carried out for the one who does not demand it.

The two Imams based their view on this very ḥadith. Hilāl ibn Umayyah accused Sharīk in connection with his own wife, yet the Prophet ﷺ did not enforce the ḥadd against him. As for the Prophet’s statement to Hilāl, “Produce proof, or else the ḥadd will be inflicted on your back,” the required proof (bayyina) here is the set of liʿān oaths, which stand in place of the four eyewitnesses.