his partner, according to one of the two views, just as if he participated with him in cutting off his son's hand. [The second view is that he is not to be amputated. And this is the most correct; because their theft together became the cause for their amputation, and the father's theft does not qualify as a cause necessitating amputation, because his taking of it is his own taking of property, unlike cutting off his son's hand] (3), for the act was purely an act of aggression, and the retaliation was only dropped due to the father's virtue, not because of a meaning in his act. Here, his act has been permeated by doubt, so it is necessary that amputation not be mandatory for it, like the participation of the intentional perpetrator and the mistaken one. If each of them extracts a threshold, amputation is mandatory upon the father's partner, because he alone performed that which necessitates amputation. If the father extracts a threshold and his partner extracts less than the threshold, there are two views regarding it. If two people confess to the theft of a threshold, then one of them retracts, the amputation is carried out on the other, because he was singular in [the act of] dropping it, so he is singular in [the consequence of] its lapse. It is also possible that it drops for his partner, because the cause is the theft by both of them, and one of its two parts has been invalidated. Likewise, if he confesses to participating with another in the theft of a threshold, and the other does not confess, there are two views regarding the amputation.

Section: Ahmad said, regarding two men who entered a house, one of them in its lower part collected the belongings and tied them with a rope, and the other in its upper part pulled the rope and threw it behind the house: amputation is mandatory upon both, because they participated in its removal. If they entered together, and one of them alone removed the belongings, our companions said: amputation is mandatory upon both. Abu Hanifah and his two companions said this as well, if he removed two thresholds. Malik, al-Shafi'i, Abu Thawr, and Ibn al-Mundhir said: amputation is only upon the one who removed it, because he is the thief. If one of them removed less than a threshold, and the other more than a threshold, and together they completed two thresholds, then according to our companions and Abu Hanifah and his two companions, amputation is mandatory upon both. According to al-Shafi'i and those who agree with him, there is no amputation for one who did not remove a threshold. If one of them removed a threshold and the other less than a threshold, then according to our companions (4), amputation is mandatory upon both. According to al-Shafi'i, the amputation is upon the one who removed the threshold alone. According to Abu Hanifah, there is no amputation for either of them, because what was removed did not reach the thresholds [required] by the number of thieves. We have already mentioned the argument for what we have said previously. If they bored a hole in a protected area (hirz), and one of them entered and brought the belongings close to the hole, and the one outside put in