And the slave is to be flogged fifty lashes and not exiled

The Shaykh :"And the slave is to be flogged fifty lashes and not exiled" means that the slave is to be flogged fifty lashes. The slave is the one who is owned, and its opposite is the free person. If a slave commits unlawful sexual intercourse, we flog him fifty lashes. What is the evidence? The evidence is the saying of Allah the Exalted meaning the female slaves and the punishment that is halved for the married women, what is it? It is flogging, because stoning cannot be halved, and flogging is one hundred lashes, so it becomes fifty lashes for her. It is clear that the woman is to be flogged fifty lashes because it is the text of the Qur'an. But if a man is a slave and commits unlawful sexual intercourse, what is the evidence that he is to be flogged fifty lashes? They said the evidence for that is analogical reasoning (qiyas), comparing the man to the woman because there is no difference, and the Shari'ah does not come with a distinction between two equal things. How is the analogy performed? They said because both of them are slaves, and the slave does not possess in himself the honor and dignity that the free person possesses. And if he does not have the honor and dignity that the free person has, then he does not care if he commits unlawful sexual intercourse; if he commits it, he does not care. Do you understand, people? This is a correct reasoning, but someone might say that the unlawful sexual intercourse of the male slave is not like the unlawful sexual intercourse of the female slave. How? Because the female slave might commit unlawful sexual intercourse because her master hires her out, may Allah protect us from that, for prostitution, and she becomes accustomed to it, so the matter becomes easy for her. Because Allah explicitly stated that this happens from the masters regarding the female slaves, He said So if the woman is in this state, then the male slave is not like this, so the analogy is not correct. For this reason, some of the scholars held that the hadd of the slave who commits unlawful sexual intercourse, if he is male, is the same as the hadd of the free person, due to the generality of the verse So there is scholarly disagreement in this matter now. There is no doubt that the female slave is not to be flogged one hundred lashes because the text is clear regarding her, that she is to be flogged fifty lashes intentionally, because the text regarding her is clear. But the issue is with the male slave, because specifying the generality in Surat al-Nur by an analogy that is not clear, due to the apparent difference between the female slave and the male slave, I say that specifying this generality with this analogy that is not clear may leave something in the mind. Yes, and up to now it has not become clear to me which of the two opinions is more correct. But the majority of the scholars are of the opinion that flogging for the slave is halved absolutely. He said "and not exiled" Why not exiled? They said because exile involves harm to the master, and the master has not committed a crime. And because if we exile him, he might run away, and that would be more harm. So if we exile him, we prevent his master from benefiting from him for the duration of the exile, and also he might run away. This is their reasoning in this matter. And many of our companions, may Allah have mercy on them, chose that he is to be exiled for half a year. They said because the generality of His saying includes exile, because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said regarding the one who commits unlawful sexual intercourse and can exile be halved or not? It can be halved, it is said he is to be exiled for half a year. And their saying that there is harm to his master in this, it is said that even flogging in front of people involves harm to his master, or not? What is the harm in it? His value decreases, people do not buy him, people are wary of him and do not trust him. So these are among the misfortunes that befall the master because of the slave's action. And it is not possible to prevent a hadd from the hudud of Allah for the sake of the interest of the master who was afflicted with these misfortunes because his slave committed unlawful sexual intercourse. And this opinion is more correct, that he is to be exiled for half a year.
And their saying that it is feared that he will run away, we say that if his master fears that he will run away, he can assign someone to him, meaning he can hire someone to stay with him in the land of exile or something similar to that by which he can guard his slave.