He replied, ‘No. Return what has been entrusted to you to the one who entrusted it to you, and do not betray the one who betrays you.’”

The Sunan collections also report that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was asked, “The zakat collectors take more from us than is due. May we conceal an amount of our wealth equal to the excess they take from us?” He replied, “No.” This was narrated by Abū Dāwūd and others.

These hadiths show that, when the grounds for a wronged person’s actual entitlement are not evident, [and] (1) he takes what he is owed through a breach of trust, he is not permitted to do so, even if he intends only to take the equivalent of his due. He has nevertheless betrayed the person who entrusted him: when that person handed over his property, he took some of it without permission, although his entitlement was not evident. He has therefore committed a breach of trust.

If he says, “I am in fact entitled to what I have taken,” his claim is still not evident and known. His situation is like that of a man who marries a woman, but she denies the marriage and he has no evidence. He is not permitted to force her to have intercourse without manifest proof of the marriage. Likewise, suppose a judge ruled that a man had divorced his wife, relying on evidence he believed to be truthful but which was in fact false. The man would not be permitted to have intercourse with her on the grounds of the true state of affairs.

If it is objected, “There is no doubt that he must be prevented from doing this on the basis of the apparent facts, and that he may not do it openly before others, since they are commanded to object to it because it is outwardly forbidden. But what if the true state of affairs is known privately, between him and Allah?”

The answer is that doing this secretly entails many prohibited harms. For if he does