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Is the punishment of cutting off a thief's fingers, while leaving the thumb, for a first-time theft, considered part of the Sunnah?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Theft is forbidden in Islam by the Qur’an, Sunnah, and scholarly consensus. Its punishment is cutting off the thief’s hand at the wrist, based on the Almighty’s saying: (As for the thief, male or female, cut off their hands). The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, cursed the thief. The hand of a thief is only cut off under certain conditions: that the theft is covert, that the stolen item is respected property and its value reaches the threshold of a quarter dinar, that it is taken from its protected place (hirz), and that the theft is proven by the testimony of two just witnesses or the thief’s confession, and that the owner of the stolen item demands its return.

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

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