Tashhir (publicly exposing or disgracing someone)

Tashhir is publicising a matter, and its ruling depends on who does it and on the person exposed. ¹

The rule is that disgracing people by naming their faults and belittling them is forbidden. ¹ It is forbidden when the person is innocent of what is said of him; it is also forbidden when he has the fault but does not flaunt it and his exposure does no harm to others, since that is backbiting. ² Lampooning a Muslim in verse is forbidden, and so is a scholar's quoting a saying in order to belittle its author. ^{2 3}

Covering a Muslim's faults is a duty for one not known for harm and corruption; the hadith says God covers on the Day of Resurrection whoever covers a Muslim. ³ A man may not expose himself; the hadith says that all of the community is pardoned except the openly sinful, among whom is one who sins at night and then tells of it in the morning. ³

It is lawful to expose one who openly flaunts a sin, since one who has put off shame has no backbiting against him; al-Qarafi applies this to one who boasts of wrongdoing. ^{3 4} For the sake of advice, it is required or allowed to impugn narrators, witnesses, and trustees of alms, endowments and orphans, and to warn people against one who sets himself up to give rulings without being qualified or who calls to an innovation; this needs a sincere intention and no invention. ^{4 5}

The hadd penalties are to be carried out before people, and Mutarrif held that the people should be told of the flogging of those guilty of wrongdoing. ⁵ In theft, the severed limb is hung on the thief's neck as a deterrent; in highway robbery the body is crucified for three days so the case becomes known. ⁶

Exposure is a kind of ta'zir whose type and degree the ruler decides. It is allowed for any sin with no hadd or expiation, and may stand alone or be combined with another penalty. ^{6 8} The Prophet applied boycott to the three who stayed behind from the campaign of Tabuk and exiled the effeminate men from Medina. ^{8 9}

Most scholars ta'zir a witness who lies knowingly and expose him, a view ascribed to Umar; Abu Hanifa said he is paraded and exposed but not beaten, and his two companions added beating and imprisonment. ⁷