The Blood of a Muslim Is Not Lawful Except in One of Three Cases

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 26 July 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — [Watch the original video on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pHIk0Re_ME)

Dr. Ahmed opened his talk by praising Allah and sending blessings and peace upon His Messenger, and with a comprehensive supplication that Allah set right for us our religion, which is the safeguard of our affairs, our worldly life, in which is our livelihood, and our Hereafter, to which is our return; that He make life an increase for us in every good and death a rest for us from every evil; and that He bring us to what we seek in obeying Him and stand between us and disobeying Him. Then he said that today's ḥadīth is the fourteenth ḥadīth of the book «Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm wa al-Ḥikam» by Imam Ibn Rajab, may Allah have mercy on him.

The text of the ḥadīth

From ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: «لَا يَحِلُّ دَمُ امْرِئٍ مُسْلِمٍ يَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَأَنِّي رَسُولُ اللَّهِ، إِلَّا بِإِحْدَى ثَلَاثٍ: الثَّيِّبُ الزَّانِي، وَالنَّفْسُ بِالنَّفْسِ، وَالتَّارِكُ لِدِينِهِ الْمُفَارِقُ لِلْجَمَاعَةِ» ("The blood of a Muslim man who bears witness that there is no god but Allah and that I am the Messenger of Allah is not lawful except in one of three cases: the married adulterer, a life for a life, and the one who abandons his religion and separates from the community").^[1]

It is one of the ḥadīths about which much has been said: it contains the matter of the lawfulness of the blood of the married adulterer, and the matter of the one who leaves his religion, that is, the apostate. But before going into that, he called for looking at what the Prophet ﷺ intended by the ḥadīth.

The aim of the ḥadīth: preserving the security and safety of society

The Prophet ﷺ wanted to preserve the security and safety of society; no one should breach the general law that the Lord of the worlds, glorified is He, has laid down. The principle regarding honour is that it be covered, the principle regarding sanctities is that they be protected, and the principle among Muslims is unity of word and of ranks; whoever wants to breach any of that has forfeited his blood just as he has violated the sanctity of society.

He explained this through what we call in our societies "the public right", which is the right of society, and it may be the right of the law or the right of the constitution. If there is a grievance between two people and one of them waives his right, the judge says to him: this is your right and you have waived it, but it concerns us as well. "What business is it of yours? I have waived it, so let him go." No: your private right has ended, but the sanctity of the public right has not ended.

Likewise, the principle regarding the Muslim women among us — my sister, your wife, your daughter, your paternal aunt, your maternal aunt, any woman in this place — is that they have sanctity, that I count them among my own sanctities and protect them, and so I feel my wife and daughter are safe when you are in the same place as I am. Whoever violates this sanctity and breaks this right has transgressed against the public right, and it is not merely the public right belonging to people alone; rather, it is the sanctity of the limits set by Allah, glorified and exalted.

Likewise whoever attacks a person who is safe in his place, whose default state is safety: he left his home, from among his wife and children, striving for his livelihood, or heading to his place of prayer, or shopping where he is; the default is that he returns to them safe and sound, by Allah's leave. If he finds someone attacking him, then there is a breach of the public right among people and of the right that belongs specifically to Allah, glorified is He. And in proportion to the sacredness of the prohibition that the law has reached is the gravity of the punishment that falls on the aggressor.

So the default in the society of Muslims is peace, calm, tranquillity, ease, shared benefit, general safety and the protection of lives. It is against this background that the Prophet ﷺ says: the blood of a Muslim man is not lawful except in one of three cases.

The married adulterer: the unmarried and the married

There are two categories of this crime: the one who is not muḥṣan (never married) and the muḥṣan (previously married). As for the one who is not muḥṣan, the legislation is a hundred lashes, and ḥadīths have come from the Prophet ﷺ with a hundred lashes and a year's banishment, and it is narrated regarding the previously married a hundred lashes and stoning, or as he ﷺ said.^[4] The basis of flogging is from the Noble Qur'an in Sūrat al-Nūr: ﴿الزَّانِيَةُ وَالزَّانِي فَاجْلِدُوا كُلَّ وَاحِدٍ مِّنْهُمَا مِائَةَ جَلْدَةٍ وَلَا تَأْخُذْكُم بِهِمَا رَأْفَةٌ﴾ ("The fornicating woman and the fornicating man: flog each of them a hundred lashes, and let no pity for them seize you")^[2]. A strong verse, sharp in tone — we do not say violent, but rigorous in preserving the rights of Allah on earth, and thereby the rights of people. On this we agree.

As for the previously married, the muḥṣan — one who married a woman before in a lawful way and then transgressed with another woman, having relations with her unlawfully — here there is disagreement. The majority of scholars hold that his punishment is stoning. And some, not only contemporaries but from long ago, say: take it easy; stoning is a destruction of a human life in a way that has a kind of ugliness, which contradicts the very purpose of the law. We answer them: where is the contradiction? They say: the image in itself is horrifying. We say: and was the act he committed not horrifying? He violated the right of the whole Ummah in his transgression against the sanctity of a Muslim woman.

Then we move to the evidence. They say: the evidence is that the Prophet ﷺ spoke of it and did it. Rulings are established in several ways: the saying of the Prophet ﷺ, his action and his tacit approval. (This relates to the very definition of the Sunnah, but here we are concerned with the establishment of legal rulings.)

How do we address the objector?

He asked: those who called for reconsidering how the matter of stoning is approached, do they mean that everyone who falls into this error we kill outright in one go, or is there more to the matter? What is their point of view? Then he said that you now have two kinds of mentality: a mentality that sees someone commenting on something of this and says to him: you are an unbelieving atheist, get out of here; and a mentality with an accommodating flexibility toward other parties, which sees someone trying to understand, or even objecting. You, by virtue of being a scholar, should not turn anyone away at all; rather, you take people in according to what they have, and your skill lies not in expelling individuals but in persuading them. Here you are like a seller selling the goods in your hands and promoting them; as long as the truth is with you, you should not drive away the one who denies it, but persuade him of what you have until he takes it in fully, without any lack.

So those who said the matter needs a pause and deliberation do not reject the ḥadīth of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ — none of them ever rejects it — but their difficulty is that this ḥadīth came by way of āḥād (solitary transmission).

Mutawātir and āḥād

This is a rather broad story. We have the mutawātir ḥadīth and the āḥād ḥadīth. The mutawātir is what a group narrated from a group from a group until it reaches the Prophet ﷺ. A ḥadīth is a chain: one generation takes it and passes it on to the one after it, and so on; if every layer of the layers contains a group, then it is mutawātir. If a single generation of these generations stands alone, that is, if the narrator in one of its layers is a single person — even if a thousand narrate from him afterwards — it is called an āḥād ḥadīth, not mutawātir.

He pointed out that this is part of the precision and mastery in transmitting the noble ḥadīth, something that has not happened with anything else in the whole world; "the engineering of the narration of the prophetic ḥadīth" is an engineering found in no other science of the universe: only in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, and beyond that you will not find this method or this precision. Sometimes a very large group narrates it, and that is very strong. Among the āḥād there is what is ṣaḥīḥ, ḥasan and acceptable, and what is weak. It may be said that a given ḥadīth is not authentic because we examined the condition of its narrators and found a defect among them, so the ḥadīth falls from the circle of the authentic to what is below it. There is much discussion of this.

So they said: this set of ḥadīths came by way of āḥād; is a human life to be destroyed in this way, by way of āḥād? We say to them: and what prevents that? We have many rulings that came by way of āḥād, and we apply them and act on them in our lives. And if a ḥadīth is established, its authenticity confirmed, and its routes and narrations are varied, then the default regarding it is acceptance.

The angle of the Qur'an: which governs the other?

Then the discussion moves to another angle: that the Noble Qur'an contains another form of punishment, for He said ﴿فَاجْلِدُوا﴾ ("flog"), and we have nothing in the Qur'an called stoning at all; it is not found in it. These people say: the Prophet ﷺ did that, but when the blessed verse came down, the principle is to refer to the Qur'anic text, which governs the action of the Prophet ﷺ. Here you enter a difficult whirlpool — he said: today's talk is difficult — namely: which of the two regulates the other? Does the action of the Prophet ﷺ govern the text of the Qur'an, or does the text of the Qur'an preside over the action of the Prophet ﷺ? With which of them do you go? And among the brothers one drew attention to the rule of timing: did the Prophet ﷺ do it after the revelation of the Qur'anic text or before it? Here you enter a very great whirlpool.

He digressed, saying that one of the young men told him two weeks earlier that he went to pray in a mosque and found them saying "the Qur'an alone", and the preacher on the minbar saying: the Qur'an alone; there is no such thing as Sunnah. Dr. Ahmed said: poor man! Where did his standing on the minbar come from in the first place? What is he doing standing on it? If he says the Qur'an alone, then on what basis does he stand on the minbar? Your standing on the minbar and the form of the sermon are a Sunnah that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ practised. And His saying ﴿فَإِذَا قُضِيَتِ الصَّلَاةُ فَانتَشِرُوا﴾ ("And when the prayer has been concluded, disperse"): if we took it in its general sense, you would have gone in and prayed two rakʿahs; and even if you prayed two or four rakʿahs, where do you get the description and form of the Ẓuhr prayer? And how do you perform Fajr, how many rakʿahs? Two; so how did you learn that? And where do you get ﴿أَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ﴾ ("Establish the prayer") and how it is done, the amount of zakāh, the rulings of fasting in their detail, the prayer of the two ʿĪds, and all the acts of worship you are engaged in? Their detail came only from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.

Then he returned and said: but we are not talking about this point; rather about the aspect of conflict: if there is a conflict between a prophetic text and a Qur'anic text, which takes precedence? Here the difficulty comes, and we use the rule the brother pointed to: which came before the other — the revelation of the verse before the action of the Prophet ﷺ, or the action of the Prophet ﷺ before the revelation of the verse?

The gist of what he said: why did these scholars disagree in the first place? Is their underlying aim to object to the saying of the Prophet ﷺ? Not at all; the evidence of these and the evidence of those, their responses to one another and their counter-arguments would take a week to discuss. They do not want to reject the saying of the Prophet ﷺ; rather, they want to understand more deeply: is it right for me to apply this set of ḥadīths to the ruling? And is the matter of stoning fixed for everyone who commits adultery, or does it vary among them?

The third group: how was the ruling issued?

This is the view of the third group, which came in to resolve this difficulty and said: take it easy, why the anger? Let us understand the matter. They said: we should look at how this ruling, which the Prophet ﷺ carried out, was issued. And pay attention to the wording of the ḥadīth with which we began: "the blood of a Muslim man is not lawful", not "everyone who does this must be killed". There is a difference between my saying: it is lawful for me to take your money, and my saying: I am obliged to take it. The blood has become lawful after having been forbidden; so who carries out the ḥadd? Who will carry out this process? The one in authority. Does the one in authority then carry out this ruling on the mass of people without consideration, or does he have discretion and assessment of circumstances?

He took an indication from the ḥadīth of the Prophet ﷺ on the ḥadd of the unmarried adulterer: «جَلْدَ مِائَةٍ وَتَغْرِيبَ عَامٍ» ("a hundred lashes and a year's banishment"). Here we have two rulings: flogging, and then removing him from the town for a year. And why? It was said: because for us he represents a danger from which we want to protect society; or because if he is flogged and then meets the same girl in another place, he may err again and fall into the crime once more, so this is a psychological isolation: it removes him from the town for a year until another situation is prepared for him by which Allah sets his affairs right, and he meets other people and changes his environment; and this is the philosophy of change in Islam.

Then, is banishment agreed upon in practice among the jurists? They said: no; rather, his condition is looked at: if he is one of the righteous and erred once — and possibly he was tempted, for example — then this is a man of righteousness who will not return to it, error is to be expected, and the human soul is by nature such-and-such, so he is flogged a hundred lashes and not banished. So if his condition is assessed psychologically, and half of the ruling is taken and applied while the other half is considered, why should the same not be done with the second? The previously married: a hundred lashes and stoning, pelting with stones; can we apply the same rule? And what prevents it, on the basis of the likelihood of that person's righteousness or corruption, and of the judge's ruling and his consideration of the condition of the one before him?

He gave as an example the variation among judges: we have a judge before whom the same offence comes from three people, and he takes a small fine from the first, more than that from the second, and many times over from the third. What is this story? This is a danger to society. And he said that one of us stops his car and the officer stops him and says to him: give me the papers, sir; he takes them and goes to his devices, then says to him: do not do that again; be careful.

Then he told a story that happened with one of their honourable friends, a heart doctor who was speeding to make it to an operation. A traffic policeman chased him and said to him: are you mad? He said to him: I am a heart doctor and I want to make it to an operation; either you come behind me or I go on and will not stop for you. He said to him: a doctor? Behind me, then. Our friend flew ahead of him with the policeman racing behind him up to the hospital door; our friend got out and ran inside to his work, and the policeman went in after him to make sure; when he found that he really was a doctor, he did not say a word to him. So he first confirmed the credibility of the one making the claim, even though the law in principle — and this is an offence — might take away his licence and put handcuffs on his hands. The law says so, but it looks at the situation and the circumstances.

The point is that when these people spoke about this matter they said: we must not reject the saying of the Prophet ﷺ or his action; rather, the offender is looked at and his condition assessed, and then the stage of trial begins on the basis of the mechanisms and circumstances before us.

Accusing Muslims of violence, and the interest of Islam

He said that today we are caught in a very great difficulty, namely the accusation that Muslims are responsible for the violence found throughout the world. Perhaps the circumstances that governed the Prophet's ﷺ conduct differed according to the occasions of his situations; so here comes the sacredness of the Prophet's words, upon him be blessings and peace, and the most complete respect for them, together with what suits a reality in which the interest of Islam prevails, not the interest of individuals.

When you reach the end of the matter, you see that there is a disagreement in it that will not end, and that the holders of each view have their argument, and a very strong argument. What remains before us is that whoever commits such a wrong has committed a crime against the Lord of the worlds, glorified is He.

The circumstances of the doer

Part of completing the matter is to look at the circumstances of the doer. Our jurists speak of this in detail: a man who married, for example, then his wife died, and he remained without a wife for many years, then a woman tempted him and he fell into it and erred. Do we call him muḥṣan because he married once, or do we judge him with the ruling of a bachelor because of his long absence from women and the fact that he has not approached any of them for a long time? He has no child and no household, and everything that applies to bachelors applies to his situation; so how do you apply the case to him? This is where these difficulties come in.

The point is that if the reins of the matter are in the hands of the inheritor of the Prophet's ﷺ knowledge, the muftī or judge who stands in the place of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in applying the legal rulings, then looking at the reality of the situation in such a crime is the most complete approach, and Allah the Exalted knows best.

“A life for a life”

Then he said: we have said "a life for a life", so let us apply these rules to what we have looked at, briefly. The apparent meaning of this text is that anyone who kills anyone is killed for it directly, is it not? But in the Qur'an I have a detailing of the rulings: whether the one killed is a believer or not, or whether it was an accidental killing. The Prophet ﷺ said "a life for a life" and did not distinguish in the text of the ḥadīth between accidental and deliberate killing. Then came His saying, the Exalted: ﴿وَمَن يَقْتُلْ مُؤْمِنًا مُّتَعَمِّدًا فَجَزَآؤُهُ جَهَنَّمُ خَالِدًا فِيهَا وَغَضِبَ اللَّهُ…﴾ ("And whoever kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell, abiding therein, and Allah's wrath…")^[3] — a punishment made severe with the strongest kinds of severity. Whoever kills by mistake, that is something else; and for whoever is pardoned, ﴿فَمَنْ عُفِيَ لَهُ…﴾ ("But whoever is pardoned…") — we have a text on this matter. And I have the rulings of blood money, which I pay, and the rulings of pardon, for the heirs of the slain to pardon. So if life has been protected in the matter of killing — and it is in the same context and in the same ḥadīth — could it not, even in some respect, likewise be protected in the matter of adultery?

The one who abandons his religion and separates from the community

The third matter remains: the one who abandons his religion and separates from the community. What is he called in the law? The apostate. His ruling by this text is death. So what do the scholars say? They say: he is asked to repent three times.^[5] Three what? Is it three days? Three days, or three attempts at persuasion? And how much time does each attempt take? Here you enter a story with a long discussion. And what do you do in the session of asking him to repent? You discuss with him, advise him and persuade him. If he is not persuaded, what do we do? We need to distinguish between one who needs persuasion and one who is obstinate. And there is one who is obstinate yet peaceable.

Here he presented categories of those who are described as apostates:

• A man says: people, I feel that I am betraying the religion of my father and mother, who were Christians, for example; I converted to Islam and I feel that I have made a very great mistake; I have regret and I want to go back. Where are you going? I sit in my home and at my work; I have nothing to do with anyone, and nothing to do with these Muslims. This is one level: not convinced, or he entered Islam and many doubts are still in his mind.
• A sister entered Islam, and shortly afterwards the sheikh said to her: who is this who came with you? She said: my friend. He said to her: how, my sister, is this possible? This is forbidden. She said: forbidden how? We have been together for twenty-five years; he is the best friend in the whole world, and we have children. He said to her: you must marry. She said: fine, we will marry. He said: that does not work, because he is not a Muslim, and a Muslim woman does not marry a non-Muslim, so from now on this relationship is over. She said: sheikh, leaving your entire religion altogether is easier for me than leaving my beloved; are you joking? This is my husband and I have no one else in the world. Dr. Ahmed said: is this talk logical or exaggerated? It is very logical.
• Another, when he entered Islam, we said to him: will you give up "the cup"? He said: I would die before giving it up. So he left the whole religion because you forbid him wine, for example. And we have a difficulty in the stages of people entering Islam and in the explanation.
• And one who said: I left it because of a cause in me that I cannot do without, and because the imam in front of me is weak in his explanation and cannot make things clear to people or present the rulings in the reasoned way recognized in the religion of Allah, blessed and exalted, with its texts and evidence. I cannot understand, and he cannot make people understand, and you have pronounced him an apostate.
• And a third who entered the religion at the start of the day and left it at its end; you know what a group of the People of the Book did in Madinah,^[6] entering and then leaving so that people would say: what happened? So-and-so entered Islam and then it became clear to him that it is a wrong religion. These are different situations.

Then he posed the question: I have a person who is still not convinced; is the responsibility on him or on the one who should persuade him? If we were held to account now, would we hold accountable the person who was not convinced and went back on his word, or the person who was not able in the first place to persuade him and convey the information to him in a sound way? Then he asked: is the ruling applied to all of these? And which of them needs tenderness, gentleness, calm nerves, engagement with the truth, careful choice of words, preparing him once more and reshaping the concepts he left behind, so that we go along with him gently and take our time until he turns to the religion again?

Conclusion

The texts of the Prophet ﷺ are established; it is not permissible for anyone — rather, it is forbidden for every Muslim — to deny any of them, and this is a given, especially what is established in the authentic collections, such as this ḥadīth. But the problem of application remains, together with understanding the mechanisms of implementation, for many of those who are in charge of this Sharīʿah.

Then he supplicated: I ask Allah, glorified and exalted, that nothing has come from my tongue that goes against the logic of conviction with Him, that He free our souls, hearts and minds from denying or turning away from anything established from our Messenger ﷺ, and that He keep us submitting to His command and the command of His Messenger until we meet Him. O Allah, āmīn, O Lord of the worlds; may Allah reward you with good.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The ḥadīth is in the Ṣaḥīḥs of al-Bukhārī and Muslim from ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him); it is the fourteenth ḥadīth in «al-Arbaʿīn al-Nawawiyyah», and Ibn Rajab explains it in «Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm wa al-Ḥikam». We have given it according to the speaker's pronunciation, which is the wording of Muslim; the wording of al-Bukhārī is: «النَّفْسُ بِالنَّفْسِ، وَالثَّيِّبُ الزَّانِي، وَالْمَارِقُ مِنَ الدِّينِ التَّارِكُ الْجَمَاعَةَ» ("a life for a life, the married adulterer, and the one who renegades from the religion, abandoning the community"). ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Nūr, verse 2, given as far as the speaker pronounced it; its continuation ﴿فِي دِينِ اللَّهِ إِن كُنتُمْ تُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ﴾ ("in the religion of Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day") does not appear in the transcript. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, verse 93; what the speaker pronounced of it was given, and the transcript breaks off there. As for ﴿فَمَنْ عُفِيَ لَهُ﴾ ("But whoever is pardoned"), it is from Sūrat al-Baqarah, verse 178, and was mentioned in the transcript as a brief allusion. And his citing ﴿فَإِذَا قُضِيَتِ الصَّلَاةُ فَانتَشِرُوا﴾ is from Sūrat al-Jumuʿah, verse 10, which in full reads: ﴿فَإِذَا قُضِيَتِ الصَّلَاةُ فَانتَشِرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ﴾ ("And when the prayer has been concluded, disperse in the land"). ^[4]: Editor's documentation: In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, from ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit (may Allah be pleased with him), the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: «خُذُوا عَنِّي، خُذُوا عَنِّي، قَدْ جَعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبِيلًا: الْبِكْرُ بِالْبِكْرِ جَلْدُ مِائَةٍ وَنَفْيُ سَنَةٍ، وَالثَّيِّبُ بِالثَّيِّبِ جَلْدُ مِائَةٍ وَالرَّجْمُ» ("Take from me, take from me: Allah has made a way for them. The unmarried with the unmarried: a hundred lashes and a year's exile; the married with the married: a hundred lashes and stoning"). And in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, from Zayd ibn Khālid al-Juhanī (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: I heard the Prophet ﷺ «يَأْمُرُ فِيمَنْ زَنَى وَلَمْ يُحْصَنْ جَلْدَ مِائَةٍ وَتَغْرِيبَ عَامٍ» ("command, regarding one who commits adultery while unmarried, a hundred lashes and a year's banishment"). ^[5]: Editor's documentation: Among the reports on asking for repentance three times is what Mālik narrated in «al-Muwaṭṭaʾ», that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him) said about a man who disbelieved after his Islam and was killed: «أَفَلَا حَبَسْتُمُوهُ ثَلَاثًا، وَأَطْعَمْتُمُوهُ كُلَّ يَوْمٍ رَغِيفًا، وَاسْتَتَبْتُمُوهُ لَعَلَّهُ يَتُوبُ وَيُرَاجِعُ أَمْرَ اللَّهِ» ("Why did you not detain him for three days, feed him a loaf every day, and ask him to repent, so that he might repent and return to the command of Allah?"). It is a statement of ʿUmar (mawqūf). ^[6]: Editor's documentation: The speaker is alluding to the words of the Exalted: ﴿وَقَالَت طَّائِفَةٌ مِّنْ أَهْلِ الْكِتَابِ آمِنُوا بِالَّذِي أُنزِلَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَجْهَ النَّهَارِ وَاكْفُرُوا آخِرَهُ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ﴾ ("And a group of the People of the Book said: Believe in what was revealed to those who believe at the beginning of the day and disbelieve at its end, that perhaps they will return") [Āl ʿImrān: 72].