refused to surrender it to a just judge who would use it to repay his debt or provide the maintenance he owes his family, relatives, slaves, or animals. An obligation often falls upon a man on account of someone else, just as he must provide maintenance because of a relative’s need, and just as blood money is payable by the killer’s ʿāqilah (the group collectively liable for his blood money).

This form of discretionary punishment applies to someone known to have in his keeping property or a person that must be produced, yet who fails to produce it or him—such as highway robbers, thieves, and those who shelter them—or someone known to have information about their whereabouts, yet who refuses to disclose it. If, however, he refuses to disclose their whereabouts or produce them to prevent the person seeking them from committing aggression or injustice against them, then he is doing good. These two situations are often confused, and uncertainty becomes entangled with personal desire. What is required is to distinguish right from wrong.

This frequently occurs among chiefs in both nomadic and settled communities when someone seeks their protection or is related to them by kinship or friendship. With the partisan zeal of pre-Islamic ignorance, pride in sin, and concern for their reputation among the rabble, they consider it a point of honor to support him—even when he is an unjust wrongdoer—against the wronged party who is in the right. This is especially so if the wronged party is a chief who vies with them and opposes them: they regard surrendering someone under their protection to an opponent as humiliation or weakness. Such an unqualified stance is pure pre-Islamic ignorance. It is among the greatest causes of corruption in both religious and worldly affairs.

It has been related that many wars among the Bedouin, such as the War of al-Basūs between Banū Bakr and Taghlib, arose from things of this kind. Likewise, the reason for the Turks and Mongols entering the lands of Islam