The Outset of Dissension in Islam — Page 103
103 for a person to be made to eat swine, drink alcohol or to shave his beard as a form of punishment, because all these things were forbidden [in Islam]. The only punishments evident in Islam are those of execution, corporal punishment, fine or expulsion from the land, whether it be in the form of exile or imprisonment. No other punishment is proven to have been administered in Islam except for the ones just mentioned. Neither did the Islamic scholars ever impose such a punishment, nor Hadrat ‘ Uthm a n ra himself, nor his governors. As such, for such a punishment to be written in this letter is sufficient proof of the fact that the letter was forged by someone who was unacquainted with the essence of Islam. The events preceding this letter also refute the possibility of it being from Hadrat ‘Uthm a n ra or his secretary, because all narrations unanimously agree that Hadrat ‘Uthm a n ra exhibited a great deal of leniency in punishing the rebels. If he had wished, Hadrat ‘Uthm a n ra could have executed them all at the first instance of their arrival. Then, if Hadrat ‘Uthm a n ra had left them on that occasion, the ringleaders could have most surely been arrested on their arrival a second time, because then they had openly committed an act of rebellion; and the companions were ready to fight them. However, to believe that he showed the rebels leniency at this stage but wrote a letter to the governor of Egypt that he should punish them, is a remarkably irrational notion. Similarly, it cannot be asserted that Marw a n wrote this letter in view of the leniency of Hadrat ‘ Uthm a n ra , because Marw a n knew well that Hadrat ‘Uthm a n ra was very strict in guarding the penal code. The conscience of Marw a n could not have allowed him to think for even a minute that he would