One is His saying:

“If a defiantly disobedient person brings you news, verify it.”

He thus commands verification whenever any defiantly disobedient person brings any report. Yet there are reports that one is forbidden to investigate, others that one may leave unverified, and others that entail punishment for certain people. For He explains that the command to verify, when a defiantly disobedient person brings us a report, is motivated by the fear that we might harm people out of ignorance. Were this equally true of anyone harmed on the basis of a report, there would be no distinction between an upright person and a defiantly disobedient one. Rather, this clearly indicates that acting against people on the report of a single upright person is not categorically prohibited. This, in turn, indicates that the testimony of a single upright witness is admissible in matters of punishment in general. The occasion of the verse’s revelation supports this: it was revealed concerning one person’s report that a people had engaged in hostilities through apostasy or breach of a covenant.

It also indicates that whenever a report from a defiantly disobedient person is accompanied by other evidence establishing its truthfulness, the matter has become clear and the requirement of further verification no longer applies. It is therefore permissible to act against people and punish them on the basis of such a person’s report together with corroborating circumstances, when the two make the facts clear. How much more so when the report comes from a single upright person and is accompanied by further evidence! For this reason, the sounder of the two opinions is that evidence of this kind constitutes grounds for suspicion in cases involving collective oaths concerning homicide. When the oaths of those swearing them are added, this constitutes evidence permitting the execution of the person against whom they swear.

As for His saying:

“Lest you harm people out of ignorance,”

He identifies the danger to be avoided as harming people without knowledge. Whenever action is taken against them with knowledge, that danger is removed. This is the criterion indicated by the Quran, as He says:

“Except those who testify to the truth while they know.”

And He says:

“Do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge.”