al-Shāfiʿī maintains that the food may be given only to the poor of Mecca.

The scholars are unanimously agreed that when a person in a state of ihram kills game, he must pay the stipulated compensation, for the textual evidence on this point is explicit. They differed, however, about a non-pilgrim who kills game inside the Sacred Precincts. The majority of jurists in the various centers hold that he too is liable for compensation, whereas Dāwūd and his followers say that no compensation is due.

There is no disagreement among Muslims concerning the prohibition of hunting within the Sanctuary; the dispute concerns only the expiation. Allah, exalted is He, says, “Have they not seen that We have made a secure Sanctuary?” (29:67), and the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Allah declared Mecca inviolable on the day He created the heavens and the earth.”

The majority further hold that if the muhrim kills game and eats it, only one expiation is required, while ʿAtāʾ and a group reported that two expiations are due.

These, then, are the well-known questions connected with this verse. As for the reasons that produced these disagreements, we shall note some of them.

Those who make deliberate killing a precondition for liability argue, first, that the verse expressly contains this condition, and second, that culpable intent is what calls for punishment, whereas expiations are, after all, a form of punishment.

Those who impose compensation even when the killing is due to forgetfulness have no proof except by likening the destruction of game to the destruction of property, for the majority hold that property must be replaced whether the loss occurs by mistake or through forgetfulness. This analogy, however, clashes with the verse’s explicit stipulation of intent. Some reply that the reference to intent pertains only to the punishment indicated in His words, “so that he may taste the consequence of his deed” (5:95). Yet this reply carries no weight, for the “consequence tasted” lies in the financial penalty itself: whether he killed by mistake or deliberately, he has tasted it. Moreover, there is consensus that the forgetful person is not punished. This argument weighs especially heavily against those who deny that expiations can be established by analogy, for they have no evidence for imposing them on the forgetful except analogy itself.

Regarding their disagreement over the “equivalent” (mithl)—does it denote a kindred animal or merely equality in value?—the cause lies in the polyvalence of the word, which in Arabic applies both to something similar in kind and to something equal in price. Those who prefer the kindred animal argue that the Arabs use mithl more readily for bodily resemblance than for parity of value. Nevertheless, those who construe mithl here as equivalence in price have proofs that impel them to this view. One is that the sense of “equivalent”—meaning equalization—is explicitly stated with respect to feeding and fasting. Moreover, if mithl is taken to mean equalization, the verse applies universally to every kind of game, for among wild animals are species that have no domesticated counterparts. Again, where no physical counterpart exists, likeness can be established only through valuation; in reality, a hunted animal has no true counterpart except one of its own species, yet the text expressly assigns its equivalent from outside that species. The equivalence must therefore be in adjustment and in price. Furthermore, the rulings for actual counterparts have already been settled, whereas equalization by valuation fluctuates with time, which is why each case requires anew the two arbiters named in the verse.

Accordingly, the estimation contained in the verse proceeds by way of analogy, as though it were saying: “Whoever among you deliberately kills game must pay the value of what he has slain from livestock, or the equivalent of that value in food, or a matching amount of fasting.”