to seclude himself from the people. Umar therefore sent Muhammad ibn Maslamah with orders to burn down Saʿd’s palace; he went and burned it down. All these incidents are authentically reported and well known to scholars versed in such matters, and there are numerous similar cases.

Anyone who claims that financial punishments have been abrogated and attributes this unqualified position to the followers of Mālik and Ahmad has misrepresented their schools. Whoever makes this sweeping claim, whatever his school, speaks without evidence. Nothing whatsoever has been reported from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, indicating that he prohibited all financial punishments. Indeed, the fact that the Rightly Guided Caliphs and his senior Companions continued to apply them after his death demonstrates that they remain in force and have not been abrogated. Explicit rulings on most of these cases are transmitted from Ahmad, Mālik and his followers, while some are also positions held by al-Shāfiʿī, based on the hadiths that reached him.

The position of Mālik, Ahmad and others is that financial punishments, like corporal punishments, fall into two categories: those that accord with Islamic law and those that contravene it. Neither Mālik nor Ahmad regards financial punishment as abrogated. Those who claim abrogation have no evidence for it from either the Quran or the Sunnah. Such is the practice of many who oppose authentic texts and the established Sunnah without any proof beyond the mere assertion of abrogation. Yet when asked to identify the abrogating text, they have no proof