is obligatory, and prescribed charity is obligatory; it has also been reported that the charity meant here is that pledged by vow. This explicitly establishes that a vow makes binding what was already obligatory under revealed law. If a person neglects it, he is punished for breaking his promise—that is, his vow. A vow is a solemn promise, as reported concerning Arab usage, and this verse calls a vow a promise.

And His words:

“I will not send him with you until you give me a solemn pledge before Allah that you will bring him back to me, unless you are overwhelmed.” When they gave him their solemn pledge, he said, “Allah is Witness over what we say.”

Returning him to his father was already obligatory upon them, even without a solemn pledge.

Permissible warfare includes defending legally protected lives, property, and sexual inviolability against an aggressor. The concession was granted specifically in peacemaking and warfare because these two situations rest upon bringing hearts together or setting them against one another. When hearts come together, there is peace; when they turn against one another, there is war. Such attraction and aversion can arise from imagined impressions just as they can from realities. Hence poetry can effectively draw people closer or drive them away, powerfully stirring desire and aversion within them, even when its words do not correspond to reality, but work through imagery or figurative comparison.

Since, in lawful peacemaking and warfare, imagining something unreal can serve the same purpose as imagining something real, and equivocal expressions do no more than suggest something unreal while the speaker intends only what is true, such speech is true and truthful from the speaker’s standpoint, while giving the listener an impression that draws him closer in a manner loved by Allah and His Messenger, or drives him away in a manner loved by Allah and His Messenger. This is like drawing him closer or driving him away through poems employing imagery and figurative comparison, and like