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What are the Sharia punishments that necessitate imprisonment?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Al-Qarafi mentioned eight reasons for imprisonment (habs), among them: imprisoning the perpetrator due to the absence of the victim's guardian, imprisoning a runaway slave for a year, imprisoning one who refuses to pay a debt, imprisoning a perpetrator as a discretionary punishment (ta'zir), imprisoning someone whose situation is unclear to investigate their case, imprisoning one who refrains from a necessary action, imprisoning one who confesses to an unknown matter that cannot be specified, and imprisoning one who refuses to fulfill a right of Allah that cannot be delegated. Others mentioned an additional reason: imprisoning something in dispute to preserve it until the lawsuit is resolved.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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