If the offender is not muḥṣan, he is to be flogged one hundred lashes and banished for a full year—even a woman, who is exiled in the company of a maḥram. A slave receives fifty lashes, with no banishment.

A sodomite is treated like a fornicator, and no ḥadd is enforced when any legal doubt (shubha) exists.

Fornication is proven either by the testimony of four men who all describe the same single act in one sitting (1) – even if they arrived separately – or by the offender’s own confession, repeated four times with a description of the act. He may retract his confession at any time before the punishment begins; if he does so, the ḥadd is abandoned.

If a woman who has neither husband nor master becomes pregnant, she is not punished merely on account of the pregnancy.

Section [On the ḥadd for slander]

The prescribed punishment for slander (qadhf) is eighty lashes, and for a slave half of that, provided the person slandered is muḥṣan – meaning a free, Muslim, sane individual who is outwardly chaste from fornication and of an age for which intercourse is typical.

Explicit slander includes statements such as: “You fornicator,” “You sodomite,” and the like.

Implicit slander includes expressions such as: “You whore,” “You licentious woman,” and similar phrases. The speaker then incurs taʿzīr (discretionary chastisement) unless he makes it an explicit accusation of fornication; the same ruling applies to one who slanders a non-muḥṣan, or who accuses an entire town or group for whom fornication is ordinarily inconceivable.

The ḥadd for slander is waived if the slandered person pardons the accuser or confirms the accusation, and it is carried out only at his request.