is obliged to disclose what he has seen, because he fears that a child who is not his may be attributed to him. Allah therefore permitted him to disown a pregnancy for which he knows no cause, and to report adultery that he has personally witnessed his wife committing. He then provided him with a way out through mutual imprecation, because he needs this recourse. He did not grant it to anyone else, since others have no such need.

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According to Mālik, all his companions, and most scholars, mutual imprecation may take place between any married couple unless both are unbelievers, whether they are free, enslaved, or have undergone a prescribed punishment, or the wife is a non-Muslim woman under Muslim protection married to a Muslim. This accords with the apparent meaning of the words of Allah—Almighty and Majestic:

“And those who accuse their wives” [al-Nūr: 6].

He did not distinguish between a free person and a slave, someone who has undergone a prescribed punishment and someone who has not, or an unbeliever and a Muslim. This differs from the position of Abū Hanīfa and his companions, who hold that neither a slave nor someone who has undergone the prescribed punishment for slander may engage in mutual imprecation. They argue that the verse refers to spouses whose testimony is admissible, because Allah excepted them from the witnesses when He said, “and have no witnesses except themselves,” thereby calling them witnesses, since what is excepted belongs to the same category as that from which it is excepted. He also said, “then the testimony of one of them,” indicating that mutual imprecation constitutes testimony, whereas the testimony of a slave or someone who has undergone a prescribed punishment is inadmissible.

This is incorrect, because the exception here involves something outside the preceding category. The meaning is: even if they have no witnesses other than their own statements, which are not testimony. This is like the sayings, “Patience is the resource of one who has no resources,” and “Hunger is the provision of one who has no provisions.” Mutual imprecation is therefore an oath and has nothing to do with testimony. Rather, the wording derives from witnessing with the eye and the heart; that is why it is called “testimony.” Accordingly, in one of his opinions, Mālik—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—said that if a man calls his wife an adulteress without saying that he saw her commit adultery or disowning a pregnancy, he is to receive the prescribed punishment and may not engage in mutual imprecation, because this wording derives from witnessing. In his mutual imprecation, the man says, “I testify by Allah that I saw her committing adultery,” and, “I testify by Allah that this child is not mine.” The first derives from witnessing with the eyes, and the second from witnessing with the heart.

Thus, the man's testimony concerns what he claims to have witnessed and known. The woman's testimony likewise concerns what she professes to know, and she knows whether he is telling the truth or lying. Each is therefore left to his or her own knowledge, although one of them is necessarily lying. How, then, can mutual imprecation properly be likened to testimony and judged by analogy with it, when an upright person's testimony on his own behalf is not accepted, even if he swears a hundred oaths, because he is a party to the dispute? Nor, according to some scholars, is his testimony on behalf of another accepted if he swears an oath