5. It demonstrates that the default ruling concerning acts of worship is prohibition; nothing may be established or added except what Allah and His Messenger have legislated.

6. Al-Nawawī likewise said, “It shows that anything acquired through a void contract must be returned to its owner and does not become the property of the taker.” This is also indicated by the ḥadīth: “I was informed that my son was to be stoned, so I ransomed him with one hundred sheep and a slave-girl.” The Prophet ﷺ said, “The slave-girl and the sheep are to be returned to you.”

7. Al-Nawawī further stated, “It proves that whoever innovates in the religion an innovation not sanctioned by the Sacred Law bears its sin; his deed is rejected and he deserves the threatened punishment.”

8. Our teacher ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Saʿdī said, “The relevance of this ḥadīth to the present chapter is that if it becomes clear that a judge’s ruling contradicts the Messenger’s command, it is set aside. Judicial decisions must rest on the rulings of the Sacred Law, and whatever judges newly introduce is to be disregarded.”

9. Al-Ṣanʿānī remarked, “It indicates that every deed not based on his ﷺ command is rejected, while whatever is grounded in the guidance of the Book and Sunnah—and is not a newly invented matter in the religion—is accepted. Indeed, this ḥadīth is half of all knowledge—rather, it is all of it—for its explicit wording establishes that every action lacking his ﷺ sanction is dismissed, and its implicit meaning affirms that every action enjoying his ﷺ sanction is accepted.”

Shaykh al-Islām, may Allah have mercy on him, said:

Claims involving suspicion—such as murder, highway robbery, theft, or assaulting people by beating and the like—fall into three categories:

1. If the accused is unquestionably innocent, it is, by consensus, impermissible to punish him.

2. If his condition is unknown—neither known for righteousness nor wickedness—he is to be detained until his state becomes clear, according to the majority of Muslim scholars. Detention here is not imprisonment; rather, it is the restraint of the person and preventing him from acting on his own, whether in a house or by placing him under the custody of the claimant.

3. If the accused is known for flagrant immorality, then—since detaining one whose status is unknown is permissible—detaining one who is openly immoral is even more so. I know of no leading scholar who held that, in all such claims, the defendant merely swears an oath and is then released with neither detention nor anything else. Whoever claims that this unrestricted, all-inclusive procedure is the sharīʿah is committing a gross and egregious mistake, contradicting the explicit texts of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and the consensus of the ummah. By such an error