It’s made news headlines. Human rights organizations have denounced it. It’s caused riots and all manners of protest. It might be the one thing you’ve heard about Islamic law. It’s the penalty for zīna, or sexual sin that applies to Muslims convicted of having sex outside of marriage.
Several months ago, I watched a film called The Kite Runner set in Afghanistan before and during the Ṭalibān regime. In a particularly wrenching moment in the movie, the protagonist is present for the stoning of a couple caught in adultery. The two are tied up and covered in the back of a truck, are brought to a sports stadium full of hundreds of people, then forced to their knees where the authorities begin to stone them. The producer of the film doesn’t leave the film’s viewers to their imagination but coldly depicts the brutality of the execution—the screaming, the impact of the stones, the blood. It is perhaps the most shocking moment of the entire film, though it is only a passing story in the film’s overarching plot.
For anyone who has seen the movie, the scene is sure to provoke lots of questions. First some facts about how zīna is prosecuted. According to sharī‘a, four male Muslim witnesses must be present at the scene of the sex act in order for zīna to be confirmed and the death sentence pronounced—a pretty strange scenario, to be sure. But three of the four schools of Sunni law allow the court to admit circumstantial evidence, and Malikis (which are dominant in North Africa) hold that if an unmarried woman becomes pregnant with child, that this is evidence of zīna. A woman who claims she has been raped must show evidence that she tried to get help if she is to be believed. And how likely is a woman to succeed in that? In their book, Partners or Prisoners, Ida Glaser and Napoleon John noted a study showing that in 1995, 140 women in Pakistan (where sharī‘a is part of the law) complained to police they had been raped, and of these only six proceeded to a full investigation (see pg 271). Clearly women are facing an uphill battle on this one.
And where does this practice of punishing zīna come from? Punishment of zīna by stoning does not actually originate in the Qur’ān (though some Muslim jurists think that it was in the canon following 4:15 but was later lost when a goat ate the papyrus containing it). Chapter 24:2 instructs that the woman and man guilty of adultery or fornication must be flogged ‘each of them with a hundred stripes.’ Nevertheless Islamic scholars have come to accept stoning as the expected punishment for zīna. Some scholars have suggested it may have come from Jewish law in the Old Testament (see Leviticus chapter 20), but that is just speculation.
I am reminded of the story of Jesus in John 8:1–11, in which the religious leaders of the Jews brought a woman caught in adultery before Jesus. (I’ve always wondered where the guilty man was. Perhaps the woman was showing with child, which is why she got singled out?) The leaders prepared to stone her, but asked Jesus what he thought they should do with her. Jesus responds, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ A stunning response for these leaders, for who among them was without sin? John reports that everyone but Jesus left the court, whereupon Jesus refused to condemn her as well but told her to go ‘sin no more.’
In the West, we tend to read this story with a sense of historical distance. What government in the West kills people for sexual sin nowadays? But given the punishment for zīna in sharī‘a, Jesus’ question is a piercing one. Who among Muslim clerics are without sin? Indeed who among any of us?
*For a good academic treatment of
