If they repent before the Imam apprehends them, Allah’s fixed legal penalties are waived, but the rights owed to individuals are not. Fighting them differs from fighting the rebels in five respects.

First, they may be fought whether they advance or turn their backs, in order to enforce the claims against them. By contrast, one who turns away among the rebels may not be pursued. Aḥmad said, according to the reports of Ibn Manṣūr, al-Faḍl, and Bakr ibn Muḥammad: “If he turns away, do not pursue him.” This is understood to apply when he turns away without any claim of retaliation or property attached to him. For he said, according to the report of Abū Ṭālib: “If he has taken property and flees, pursue him; but if he abandons it, do not pursue him.”

Second, in battle it is permissible to deliberately kill those among them who have killed, whereas it is not permissible to deliberately kill the rebels.

Third, they are held liable for whatever property they destroy and blood they shed, both during the fighting and otherwise, unlike the rebels.

Fourth, it is permissible to imprison those of them who are captured in order to investigate their circumstances, whereas it is not permissible to imprison anyone from among the rebels.

Fifth, whatever land tax they levy and alms they take is treated as property seized by usurpation. It does not absolve those liable for the land tax or alms from their obligations, unlike what is taken by the rebels.

When the official appointed to fight them has authority restricted to fighting them alone, then, after gaining power over them, he may neither impose the fixed legal penalties nor enforce any claim against them. Rather, he must bring them before the Imam, so that he may order the penalties to be imposed upon them and the claims against them to be enforced.

But when his authority is general, encompassing both fighting them and enforcing the fixed legal penalties and claims against them, he must be a man of learning and uprightness, so that his judgment may take effect in the penalties he imposes and the claims he enforces. Their circumstances may be ascertained in one of two ways: either through their voluntary admission, without coercion or beating, or through legally valid testimony against one who denies the charge.

Once he learns through either of these means what crimes each of them committed, he examines the case. Whoever among them killed and seized property is executed and then crucified. This execution is mandatory and cannot be pardoned. If the victim’s heir pardons him, that pardon has no legal effect. He is left crucified for three days, no longer, and then taken down. Whoever among them killed without seizing property is executed but not crucified; he is washed, and the funeral prayer is performed over him.