with a bloodstained sword in his hand. He had killed his wife, and her family came to complain against him. The man said:

“I found a scoundrel lying between her thighs, so I struck there with the sword.”

Umar took the sword, shook it, then handed it back to him and said, “If he does it again, do the same again.”

Some scholars hold that the killer is not subject to legal retaliation if the adulterer had consummated a valid marriage, whether the killer was the woman’s husband or someone else. This is the view of a group of scholars in the schools of al-Shāfiʿī and Ahmad.

The basis of the first view, however, is that the man violated the husband’s honour. It is therefore comparable to putting out the eye of someone peering into one’s home, or to the case of the man who pulled his hand from a biter’s mouth, causing the biter’s front teeth to fall out. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, ruled that no compensation was due for the injury, saying:

“Should he leave his hand in your mouth for you to gnaw at it like a male camel?”

Acting upon the first hadith is the position of al-Shāfiʿī and Ahmad. Some scholars did not act upon it, arguing that an aggressor must be repelled by the least force necessary. But the explicit text takes precedence over this opinion.

This opinion has been disputed among both earlier and later scholars. A thief entered upon Abdullah ibn Umar, and he drew his sword against him. They said:

“Had we not stopped him, he would have struck him.”

Ahmad ibn Hanbal cited this action of Ibn Umar as evidence, together with the two hadiths mentioned earlier, and adopted that position.

If, however, the man had not yet committed an indecent act but had come for that purpose, the matter is disputed. The more cautious course for the killer in such circumstances is to repent of the killing. As for