ADULTERY AND FORNICATION

Adultery is severely punished.  �UbAda reports the Prophet as saying: �Receive teaching from me, receive teaching from me.  Allah has ordained. . . . When an unmarried male commits adultery with an unmarried female, they should receive one hundred lashes and banishment for one year.  And in case of a married male committing adultery with a married female, they shall receive one hundred lashes and be stoned to death� (4191).

�Umar adds his own emphasis: �Verily Allah sent Muhammad with truth and He sent down the Book upon him, and the verse of stoning was included in what was sent down to him.� �Umar is emphatic because in the QurAn there is no punishment for adultery as such, though there is one for the larger category of zinA, which means sexual intercourse between parties not married to each other.  In this sense, the term includes adultery as well as fornication.  And the punishment provided for both is one hundred stripes and not stoning to death as enjoined in the Sunnah for adultery.  �The whore and the whoremonger.  Flog each of them with a hundred stripes,� preaches the QurAn (24:2).

�Umar was apprehensive that people might neglect the Sunnah and appeal to the Book as grounds for a lenient punishment for their adultery.  Therefore, he said quite emphatically: �I am afraid that, with the lapse of time, the people may forget it and may say, �We do not find the punishment of stoning in the Book of Allah,� and thus go astray by abandoning this duty prescribed by Allah.  Stoning is a duty laid down in Allah�s Book for married men and women who commit adultery� (4194).

author : ram swarup