If someone who enjoins right and forbids wrong is attacked and harmed, and the person he is addressing then repents and accepts the truth from him, he should not exact retribution from that person or punish him for the harm he caused. Through repentance, that person’s liability for violating Allah’s right has been removed, just as a disbeliever’s liability for violating Allah’s rights is removed when he embraces Islam. As authentically reported, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:
“Islam wipes away what came before it, and repentance wipes away what came before it.”
When a disbeliever embraces Islam, Islam wipes away what came before it. This includes his transgressions against Muslims’ lives and property, because he did not believe those acts to be forbidden; rather, he regarded them as lawful. When he repents of that, he is forgiven both for regarding those acts as lawful and for the actions that followed from that belief.
Likewise, the person being commanded or forbidden may regard harming the one who enjoins right and forbids wrong as lawful. Such is the case with people of religious innovation and desires who believe themselves to be right and regard the person commanding or forbidding them as an aggressor against them. If they repent, they are not punished for their transgressions against someone from Ahl al-Sunnah who enjoins right and forbids wrong. An example is a Rāfidī who believes the Companions to have been disbelievers or evildoers and reviles them on that basis. If he repents of this belief and comes to love them and give them his allegiance, they no longer have any claim against him. Rather, their right is encompassed by Allah’s right, arising and lapsing with it, because it stems from his belief.
For this reason, the majority of scholars—including Abū Hanīfah, Mālik, Ahmad according to the sounder of the two reports from him, and al-Shāfiʿī according to one of his two opinions—held that rebels acting on a religious interpretation are not liable to compensate those on the side of justice for what they destroy on the basis of that interpretation. Likewise, by scholarly consensus, those on the side of justice are not liable to compensate the rebels for what they destroy on the basis of a religious interpretation.