pays from the absent person’s property because he is compelled to make the payment, then he has even greater reason to be excused when compelled to pay on that person’s behalf.

If the opposing party argues, “That is because, in that case, the payment comes from the compelled payer’s own property, so he is the one wronged,” they should be told:

Rather, both are wronged: the payer is wronged by being made to pay on the other’s behalf, and the other is wronged by the demand for his property. How, then, can the entire burden be placed on the payer, when the primary purpose is to demand money from the person on whose behalf he pays? Actions are judged only by intentions. The unjust claimant intends to take that person’s property, not the payer’s; he merely demands that the payer pay on the other’s behalf.

Moreover, the person compelled to pay on behalf of someone absent is an outright victim of injustice affecting both his person and his property, whereas the absent person is wronged in respect of his property. How, then, can the payer’s property be made a shield for the other’s property against the injustice of the oppressor who compelled him? Or how can someone with little wealth have many times his share taken from him, while nothing is taken from someone with great wealth?

At most, this may be likened to the wrongful seizure of undivided jointly owned property. If the usurper takes one of the two partners’ shares from a jointly owned asset, what he takes is reckoned as coming from that partner’s property, according to the stronger of the two scholarly opinions. This is the apparent position of the schools of al-Shāfiʿī and Ahmad, among others, because he intended only to take the property of one of the two partners.