Sins of the Body
Among the sins of the body are:
- To treat one’s parents with what harms them
- To flee the battlefield
- Severing the obligatory ties of kinship
- To inflict an apparent harm upon the neighbor, even if he is a blasphemer, as long as he has been granted safety
- To dye the hair black; some scholars state that it is allowed if it does not result in cheating or tricking
- For men to imitate women or women to imitate men in the clothing specific to the gender of the opposite sex and in other matters
- To wear the dress lower than the ankle bones out of vanity
- For a man to needlessly dye his hands and feet with henna
- To interrupt the obligatory worship without an excuse
- To interrupt the optional Hajj and ‘Umrah
- To imitate the believer mockingly
- To spy on the people pursuing their defects
- To tattoo
- To shun a Muslim for more than three days without a valid reason
- To sit with an innovator [bid'ati] or one who commits enormous sins [fasiq] and to entertain him in his sinning
- For a man to wear gold, silver, silk, or what is mostly silk – with the exception of a silver ring
- To be with the marriageable [ghair-mahram] woman when a third person whom one would be shy in front of – either male or female – is not present [khalwah]
- For a woman to travel without a non-marriageable [mahram] male and the like
- To coerce a free person
- To have enmity with a highly ranked pious righteous Muslim [sing. waliyy | pl. awliya]
- To help others to sin
- To circulate counterfeit money
- To use and to have gold and silver utensils
- To neglect an obligation, to do an obligation leaving out one of its integrals or conditions, or to intentionally commit an act that invalidates while performing an obligation
- To leave out the Friday prayer [salatu-l jumu'ah] when it is one’s obligation, even if one prayed the afternoon prayer [salatu-z zuhr]
- For the inhabitants of a place to leave out praying the obligatory prayers in congregation [jama'a]
- To defer one’s obligations until the time is over without an excuse
- To hunt with something that kills the animal by its weight, such as a stone
- To use an animal as a shooting target
- For the woman who is in a post marital-waiting period for death [iddah] to adorn herself in clothing, jewelry, scent, and inexcusably leaving the home
- To stain the mosque with a filth [najas] or to make it dirty even with something pure [tahir]
- To delay performing Hajj until death, while able to perform it when alive
- To take a loan without the ability to pay it back, without informing the lender
- To refuse to grant more time for the one who is unable to pay his debt
- To spend money in disobedience
- To belittle the book of the Qur’an and every Islamic Knowledge and to enable the child who has not reached an age of mental discrimination [ghair mumayyiz] to carry or handle the Mushaf
- To change property line markers, i.e., to unjustly change the markers between one’s own property and that of others
- To use the street in that which is unlawful
- To use a borrowed thing in other than what one is permitted, to keep a borrowed thing longer than permitted, or to lend a borrowed thing to someone else without permission
- To prevent others from using what is permissible – such as the meadow, or the collection of fire-wood from the unowned land, or the extraction of salt, gold, silver, and other resources from their unowned origin, i.e., to appropriate those resources and prevent people from grazing their animals, or using drinking water from a self-
replenishing source - To use the lost and found article [luqatah] before satisfying the conditions of notification
- To sit in a place where disobedience is being committed without an excuse
- Sponging in banquets, i.e., to enter without permission or be admitted out of shyness
- To commit inequity among the wives in terms of obligatory spending and overnight turns; the preference in attraction to one wife over another and in the heartfelt loving is not a sin
- For a woman to go out with the intention to pass by men to tempt them
- Sorcery
- To rebel against the caliph, like those who rebelled against our liege-lord ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib and fought him. Imam Al-Bayhaqi said: “All who fought ‘Ali were aggressors.” Imam Al-Shafi’i has said the same, even though some of the best Companions were among those aggressors. The Awliya are not impeccable from committing a sin [ghair ma'sum], even if it is an enormous sin; however, he repents off it
- To accept taking care of an orphan or a mosque, or to act as a judge and the like knowing that one will be unable to perform the task appropriately
- To shelter an unjust person i.e. to protect him from those who want to obtain their right from him
- To terrorize Muslims
- To waylay; depending on the committed crime, the waylayer’s punishment is either a disciplinary action [ta'zir] or cutting the right hand and the left foot, or killing him, or killing him and hanging his body on a pole
- To neglect fulfilling the vow [nadhr]
- To continue fasting for two or more days without eating or drinking anything
- To occupy someone else’s seat in a street or the like, to harmfully crowd him, or to take his turn
Important Note
The punishments mentioned above are only meted out if an Islamic government is functioning. Individuals/groups are not permitted by Sacred Law to administer them on their own accord. To do so is vigilantism, which is anathema to Islam.
And Allah and His Messenger know best!
