al-Khaṭṭāb’s burning of the writings of the Ancients; his order that the palace Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ had built—so he could keep himself apart from the people—be set ablaze, for which he dispatched Muḥammad ibn Maslamah with instructions to burn it down, and he went and burned it.
All of these incidents are sound and well known to practitioners of this discipline, and there are many parallels to them. Whoever asserts that financial penalties have been abrogated and then attributes this sweeping claim to the schools of Mālik and Aḥmad has misunderstood their positions; and whoever makes the claim in absolute terms, no matter which school he follows, is speaking without proof. Nothing whatsoever has come from the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—to indicate that every form of financial punishment is forbidden. On the contrary, the fact that the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the leading Companions continued to apply such measures after his death shows that the ruling is still in force and has not been repealed.
For most of these specific cases we have explicit statements from Aḥmad, Mālik, and their students; some of them are likewise reported from al-Shāfiʿī in light of the ḥadīth evidence that had reached him. The view of Mālik, Aḥmad, and others is that financial punishments, like corporal ones, are of two kinds: those that conform to the Sharīʿah and those that conflict with it. In their estimation, financial penalties have certainly not been abrogated.
Those who claim abrogation possess no evidence for it—neither from the Book nor from the Sunnah. This is typical of many who oppose authentic texts with no proof other than the mere assertion of abrogation. When such a person is asked to produce the abrogating text, he has none; all he can say is that his group has unanimously abandoned acting on the text, and that consensus is itself proof of abrogation. Undoubtedly, if a genuine consensus were established it would indeed indicate abrogation, for the ummah does not agree upon error. Yet no consensus on abandoning a text is ever recognised unless the abrogating text is also known. Hence, when most people claim that a scriptural ruling has been annulled by an alleged consensus, closer examination shows that the consensus they cite is invalid. At best, they were simply unaware of any dissent; in fact, it is often the case that the majority of scholars hold an opinion contrary to theirs, but they themselves have never acquainted themselves with the scholars’ views.