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204chapter fourbefore it mentions the duties of prayer and zak§h. 21 In sum, the lowerlimit of atonement is freeing at least one ‘financially enslaved person’.If one can afford it, one should release more than one. If one cannotafford to free even one, a two-month fast is the absolute minimumfor the reparation of the crime.D. Public homosexual activities ( al-faÈsha)I.Female homosexuality in public:If any of your women are guilty of lewdness ( al-f§Èisha), 22 take theevidence of four (reliable) witnesses from amongst you againstthem. And if they testify confine them to houses until death doclaim them, or God ordain for them some (other) way. ( Al-Nis§"4:15)The upper limit for punishing homosexual activities between twowomen in public is their confinement to the house. Their crime isnot the homosexual activity as such but the illicit performance of asexual intercourse in public. The Book is silent about homosexualrelationships in people’s private sphere. However, homosexual intercoursein public will be prosecuted, for which the verse demandsfour (reliable) witnesses ‘from amongst you’ (masculine plural), thatis from the general passer-by. No penalty can be inflicted if a witnessis from their own kind: the text clearly says minkum, not minhunna(from among the homosexual women). This implies that, for example,a public ‘coming out’ of a woman who confesses to be lesbianwould not count as proper testimony. In any case, since homosexualfeelings and desires are not sinful but the public act of intercourseis, lesbian women can enter into a romantic relationship as long asthey avoid sexual acts in public. Even if they are caught in public,21‘It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards East or West. But it isrighteousness to believe in God and the Last Day, and the angels, and the Book, andthe messengers; to spend of your substance ["at§ al-m§l], out of love for Him, for […]the ransom of [the financially enslaved] [ fi ’l-riq§b]; to be steadfast in prayer, andpractice regular charity [zak§h]; to fulfil the contracts which you have made; and tobe firm and patient, in pain (or suffering) and adversity, and throughout all periodsof panic. Such are the people of truth, the God-fearing’ ( Al-Baqara 2:177).22MS understands the Arabic word al-f§Èisha in this context not as ‘lewdness’ inthe sense of any illicit heterosexual relations (adultery or fornication) but as an illicitpublic homosexual intercourse between either two women (4:15) or two men (4:16).This allows him to see no contradiction with the other verses (and what they containof punishments) that deal with ‘abomination’ in a heterosexual context.