subject to the threat under any circumstances. A scholar exercising independent judgment is excused—indeed, rewarded—so the condition for coming under the threat is absent in his case. He therefore does not come under it, whether he believes that the hadith retains its apparent meaning or that the matter admits of disagreement for which one may be excused. This is a conclusive argument from which there is only one possible escape: for the questioner to say:

“I concede that some scholars exercising independent judgment believe that the disputed case falls within the texts containing threats of punishment and, on that basis, invoke the threat against it, cursing, for example, anyone who commits that act. Yet this belief of theirs is mistaken, though their error is one for which they are excused and rewarded. They therefore do not come under the threat against those who curse unjustly, because I understand that threat to apply to cursing that is unanimously agreed to be forbidden. Whoever utters a curse unanimously agreed to be forbidden exposes himself to the punishment threatened for cursing. But when the cursing itself is a matter of disagreement, it does not fall within the hadiths containing threats of punishment, just as an act whose permissibility, and the permissibility of cursing its perpetrator, are disputed does not fall within those hadiths. Thus, just as I exclude the disputed case from the first threat, I exclude it from the second.

“I believe that, on both sides, the hadiths containing threats of punishment do not encompass the disputed case, whether the disagreement concerns the permissibility of the act or the permissibility of cursing its perpetrator, and whether the act is held to be permissible or impermissible. Under either assumption, I do not deem it permissible to curse its perpetrator, nor do I deem it permissible to curse someone who curses its perpetrator. I do not believe that either the perpetrator or the one who curses him falls within a hadith containing a threat of punishment. Nor do I rebuke the one who curses as harshly as someone who considers him exposed to that threat would do; rather,