As for their divergence over a woman’s power to grant safe-conduct, it turns on how they understood the Prophet’s—peace and blessings be upon him—words: “We have granted protection to whomever you have granted protection, O Umm Hāniʾ,” and on whether a woman is to be analogized to a man in this respect.
Those who took the ḥadīth to mean that the Prophet merely ratified her pledge—and that, without his ratification, it would have carried no weight—concluded: A woman’s pledge is invalid unless the imām approves it.
Those who understood his statement to mean that her pledge was already binding and effective, and that his approval simply acknowledged its validity, ruled that a woman’s pledge stands on its own. The same ruling was reached by scholars who likened her to a man, seeing no legal distinction between them; whereas those who deemed her legally deficient in comparison to a man did not accept her pledge.
In any case, a pledge of safety has no bearing on enslavement; its sole legal effect is to bar killing. One may also trace the disagreement to their broader debate over whether masculine plural terms in the Law include women or not—that is, according to accepted sharʿī usage.
As for the actual harm done to lives, that is killing. There is unanimous agreement among Muslims that, during battle itself, it is permissible to kill adult male idolaters who are combatants. Killing after capture, however, is the very issue already mentioned.
They likewise agree that it is impermissible to kill their children or their women unless the woman or the child actively fights. If a woman does fight, her blood becomes lawful, because it is firmly established that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—“forbade the killing of women and children,” and, regarding a slain woman, he said, “She was not one who would fight.”
The scholars differ over secluded monks, hermits, the blind, the chronically ill, the elderly who do not fight, the insane, farmers, and hired laborers:
• Mālik said: The blind, the insane, and the inhabitants of monasteries are not to be killed, and they should be left enough of their property to live on; nor is a very old man to be killed. Abū Ḥanīfah and his companions said the same.
• Al-Thawrī and al-Awzāʿī held that only the very old are to be spared.
• Al-Awzāʿī further said: Farmers are not to be killed.
• Al-Shāfiʿī, in what is deemed his soundest view, held that all of these categories may be killed.
Their disagreement stems from the tension between certain specific reports and the general import of the Qur’an, together with the general hadith: “I have been commanded to fight the people until they say, ‘There is no deity but Allah,’” as well as the Almighty’s words:
“Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the polytheists wherever you find them.” (al-Tawbah 9:5)