The ruling on one who hints at false accusation of adultery without stating it explicitly
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
Honorable Shaykh, if a person hints at it but does not explicitly state a false accusation of adultery, is the fixed punishment carried out against him?
The Shaykh:
There is scholarly disagreement on this. They call it *kinayah* (indirect speech). If a person uses an expression that implies a false accusation of adultery but is not explicit, the scholars differed. Some said he is subject to the fixed punishment, and some said no; as long as he did not utter the explicit accusation, he is not subject to the fixed punishment.
The questioner:
Very honorable.
The Shaykh:
But he is subject to a discretionary punishment. Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, if a person hints at it but does not explicitly state a false accusation of adultery, is the fixed punishment carried out against him?
The Shaykh:
There is scholarly disagreement on this. They call it *kinayah* (indirect speech). If a person uses an expression that implies a false accusation of adultery but is not explicit, the scholars differed. Some said he is subject to the fixed punishment, and some said no; as long as he did not utter the explicit accusation, he is not subject to the fixed punishment.
The questioner:
Very honorable.
The Shaykh:
But he is subject to a discretionary punishment. Yes.
Source
شرح بلوغ المرام من أدلة الأحكام [ صالح الفوزان ]، باب حد القذف — islamhouse.com (54:21)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.