As for someone who finds himself in the middle of unlawfully seized land, his departure with the intention of vacating the place and restoring it to its rightful owner is neither prohibited nor unlawful. Indeed, the jurists agree that if someone seizes a house and leaves his belongings and wealth there, then is ordered to restore it to its rightful owner, he must leave and remove his family and possessions. Although this involves a form of use of the property, its purpose is to vacate it. Likewise, a polytheist who enters the Sacred Precinct is ordered to leave, even though doing so involves passing through it.

A similar example is the hadith of the Bedouin, whose authenticity is agreed upon. When he urinated in the mosque, the people rose to stop him, but the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Do not interrupt him”—that is, do not interrupt his urination—and instructed them to pour a bucket of water over his urine.

Once he had begun urinating, it was better for him to finish than for them to interrupt him and thereby cause him to soil his clothes and body. Likewise, if a man were to have unlawful intercourse with a woman and then repent, he would withdraw and would not be sinning by withdrawing. But is withdrawal itself considered intercourse? There are two views on this, both transmitted from Ahmad.

Suppose, then, that a man swears not to have intercourse with his wife, making a threefold divorce conditional upon doing so. Those who hold that a threefold divorce takes effect if he has intercourse with her disagree over whether he may lawfully do so. There are two views, both transmitted from Ahmad.

The first is that it is permissible, as al-Shāfiʿī holds. The second is that it is not permissible, as Mālik holds. He argues: “If you permit intercourse, it follows that he will have intimate contact with her while withdrawing, when she is forbidden to him. This is permitted only out of necessity; it does not make initiating intercourse permissible.” The proponent of the other view maintains that withdrawal is not forbidden.