He also said (1): “Concluding a peace with the belligerents by suspending combat for ten years is permissible. May it extend beyond that? The correct view is that it is allowed whenever need and an overriding benefit demand it—such as when the Muslims are weak and their enemy is stronger—and that a pact exceeding ten years can contain an advantage for Islam.”

He further said (2): “The truce—whether open-ended or time-bound—may be contracted in whatever form secures the benefit, and that benefit may at times lie precisely in such flexibility… for if an agreement is set for a long term, it may still prove expedient for the Muslims to resume fighting before that term elapses. All the more so when this is affirmed by the Book and the Sunnah. Most of the Prophet’s treaties with the polytheists were of this nature: open-ended, undated, permissible yet non-binding.”