Section: The Nature of Secure Custody from Which Theft Warrants Amputation
Once the requirement of secure custody is established, it need not involve doors, locks, or bolts. Rather, secure custody is whatever people customarily use to safeguard and protect their possessions. The cases discussed in this book and elsewhere will clarify what constitutes secure custody and what does not, if Allah Most High wills. These include their disagreement concerning theft from a shared house or one into which entry is permitted. In summary, houses fall into six categories with regard to theft from them:
A house whose occupant or owner excludes other people from entering.
A house occupied exclusively by a man and his wife.
A house whose occupant or owner grants people general permission to enter.
A house shared by its occupants and open to the public.
A house shared by its occupants but closed to everyone else.
As for a house whose occupant or owner excludes other people from entering, anyone who steals from it property of a value warranting amputation is subject to amputation once he takes it outside the house. If he steals from one of its rooms but is apprehended within the house before leaving it, he is not subject to amputation. There is no disagreement on this.
As for a house whose occupant or owner permits particular people to enter—for example, a man who invites a guest into his house, or sends someone to his house to fetch his belongings from one of its rooms, or something similar—there are two opinions concerning a guest or messenger who steals from a room whose door has been fastened and which he has been forbidden to enter:
The first is his view in al-Mudawwanah, in Ibn al-Mawwāz’s book: he is not subject to amputation, even if he takes what he stole entirely outside the house, because he has betrayed a trust rather than committed theft.
The second is Sahnūn’s view: he is subject to amputation even if he has not taken it outside the house, provided he takes it into the area he was permitted to enter. For, in Sahnūn’s view, his case resembles that of people sharing the courtyard of a house in cases of theft