Should Abu Bakr have punished Khalid ibn al-Walid for killing Malik ibn Nuwayra?

The killing of Malik ibn Nuwayra in the Ridda wars is one of the most debated episodes between Sunnis and Imamis. In Minhaj al-Sunna Ibn Taymiyya answers Ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli on it twice: once where al-Hilli attacks Khalid ibn al-Walid, and once where he faults Abu Bakr for not punishing Khalid. The card gives Ibn Taymiyya's answer first, then al-Hilli's argument as Ibn Taymiyya quotes it, then the account of the episode the editor quotes in a footnote, and does not decide between them. ^{1 2}

Ibn Taymiyya quotes al-Hilli: when Abu Bakr sent Khalid against the people of al-Yamama, Khalid killed, by al-Hilli's account, twelve hundred of them although they professed Islam; he killed Malik ibn Nuwayra in captivity while he was a Muslim and took his wife; and the Banu Hanifa were called apostates because they did not bring their alms to Abu Bakr, not believing in his imamate. ¹ In the second passage he quotes al-Hilli's charge that Abu Bakr "neglected God's penalties, neither retaliating against Khalid ibn al-Walid nor punishing him" when he killed Malik, who was a Muslim. ²

Ibn Taymiyya replies that the people of al-Yamama were the Banu Hanifa, who believed in Musaylima's claim to prophethood, and that they were fought at al-Yamama for that, not for withholding alms; those who withheld alms were other groups, about fighting whom some Companions had doubts, and he cites the exchange between Umar and Abu Bakr on this from the two Sahihs. Here Ibn Taymiyya uses harsh language of his opponents, calling them followers of the apostates – his judgements in the course of the polemic. ^{1 3 4}

• The counter-example of Uthman's killers: if failing to execute the killer of someone whose blood was inviolable is a fault in a ruler, Ibn Taymiyya says, this would be the strongest argument of Uthman's partisans against Ali, who did not execute Uthman's killers; if Ali had a lawful excuse, Abu Bakr's was stronger. He adds that penalties are averted by doubt, and that the conditions for exacting retribution were absent because of the doubt involved. ²
• Umar's advice: Umar's advising Abu Bakr to execute Khalid was, at most, a question of independent judgement in which Abu Bakr's view was not to execute him and Umar's was to do so; and Umar was not more learned than Abu Bakr, by Sunni or by Shi'i reckoning. ^{5 6}
• Inviolability and interpretation: Malik "is not known to have had inviolable blood"; at most it can be said that he did and that Khalid killed him on an interpretation, which does not make Khalid liable to death. He cites the Prophet's rebuke of Usama ibn Zayd for killing a man who had said "there is no god but God", without imposing retaliation, blood-money or expiation; al-Tabari's report from Ibn Abbas and Qatada on the occasion of al-Nisa 94; and the Prophet's disowning what Khalid did to the Banu Jadhima on an interpretation, without executing him – so if the Prophet did not execute him, Abu Bakr all the more so. ^{5 7}
• The Banu Jadhima: in the first passage Ibn Taymiyya corrects al-Hilli's account: Khalid was sent to them after the conquest of Mecca to invite them to Islam; they said "we have become Sabians" (saba'na) and he did not accept it; Salim, the client of Abu Hudhayfa, and Abd Allah ibn Umar objected; the Prophet sent Ali, who paid them blood-money and compensated what was lost; and the Prophet did not remove Khalid from command. Khalid, he says, "was not of the standing of others in law and religion", so the ruling escaped him. ^{8 9}
• The marriage report: that Khalid married Malik's wife the night he was killed "is not known to be established", Ibn Taymiyya says; even if it were, an interpretation would avert the penalty. He sets out the jurists' disagreement over the waiting period of the widow of an original unbeliever and of an apostate – a full death-waiting period, a single menstrual cycle, or nothing if the marriage was unconsummated – noting that Khalid killed Malik because he saw him as an apostate. He concludes that he does not know the episode to have happened in a way that leaves no room for independent judgement. ⁶

The edition's editor quotes in a footnote from Ibn Kathir's al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya: Malik had made terms with Sajah, then regretted it and wavered, and was encamped at al-Butah; Khalid's detachments captured him and his companions, and the detachment disagreed about them: Abu Qatada testified that they had prayed, others that they had neither given the call to prayer nor prayed. Ibn Kathir then gives two versions of the killing: that on a cold night Khalid's herald called out "warm your captives" (adfi'u), which was taken as an order to kill, and Dirar ibn al-Azwar killed Malik; or that Khalid summoned Malik and rebuked him for following Sajah and withholding alms, Malik replied "your companion used to claim that", and Khalid ordered him beheaded. This is the editor quoting Ibn Kathir, not Ibn Taymiyya. ⁵

Al-Hilli's own text, the accounts of al-Tabari, al-Baladhuri and others taken directly from their books, and what the Imamis say in their own sources have not yet been added.