“then fail to produce four witnesses—flog them with eighty lashes.”

And in the same surah He says:

“Why did they not produce four witnesses to it?”

He thus specified the number of witnesses but left their qualifications unrestricted. He did not stipulate that they must be from among us, or be acceptable to us, or possess upright character, as He stipulated qualifications for witnesses elsewhere.

Scholars therefore disagreed over whether the testimony of four witnesses that entails the prescribed punishment for the person guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse—such as the testimony of sinful and disobedient people and others—averts the prescribed punishment from the accuser. There are two views within Ahmad’s school.

One view is that it averts the prescribed punishment from the accuser, even if it does not establish the prescribed punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse against the accused. This is comparable to a husband testifying four times by Allah against his wife: this averts the prescribed punishment for slander from him, but his wife does not incur the prescribed punishment on that basis alone, since she can avert punishment from herself by testifying four times. If she does not testify, however, should she receive the prescribed punishment, be detained until she confesses or participates in the mutual imprecation, or be released? There is a well-known disagreement among scholars on this issue.

Thus, averting the prescribed punishment from the accuser does not necessarily entail imposing the prescribed punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse upon the accused. Both are prescribed punishments, and prescribed punishments are averted by doubts. The four testimonies provide strong grounds for doubt in the accuser’s favor. If the accused were to confess once, twice, or three times, the prescribed punishment would be averted from the accuser, yet, according to most scholars, those admissions would not make the prescribed punishment obligatory. Likewise, if the accused were not chaste—for example, someone notorious for sexual immorality—the accuser would not receive the prescribed punishment for slander, nor would the accused receive the prescribed punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse on the basis of widespread reports alone,