Answer
Salam (Peace),
Thank you for your question.
Please find part two of the answer to your question below. Find the first part at the link here and the third and final part at the link here.
Conceal Sins, Don’t Scandalize
According to the Islamic law, the authorities are not supposed to spy on people in order to check who commits adultery and who does not.
Muslim authorities are only supposed to educate their people, not spy on them. Spying is a sin, which the Quran is clear about:
{O you who have attained to faith! Avoid most suspicion [about one another] for, behold, some of [such] suspicion is [in itself] a sin; and do not spy upon one another.} (Al-Hujurat 49:12)
In fact, if one Muslim witnesses what he or she thinks is an act of adultery without the company of three other witnesses, the prescribed action is to conceal or cover these people’s sin and not to scandalize them.
Ibn Al-Mulaqqin narrated about the story of stoning Maaiz:
Abdullah Ibn Unais came and mentioned Maaiz’s story to the Prophet. So, the Prophet told them: “You should have left him. Maybe Allah would have forgiven him.” Then, he told Hazzaal: “O Hazzaal! You did the worst thing to that orphan. If you had covered him with your robe, that would have been better for you.” Then, he called the woman who was involved with Maaiz and told her: “Go”, and did not ask her about anything. (Ibn Al-Mulaqqin, Al-Badr Al-Munir fi Takhrij Al-Ahadith wa Al-Athar Al-Waqiah fi Al-Sharh Al-Kabir, 1st ed. Riyad: Dar Al-Hijrah, 2004, vol. 2, p. 622)
It was narrated in Al-Bukhari and Muslim that Anas narrated that he was with the Prophet when a man came to him and said:
Oh Messenger of Allah, I deserve a hadd (corporal punishment) for something I did. So, apply it to me.
The Prophet did not ask him which punishment he deserved, until the prayer was called for and he prayed with the Prophet. After the prayer, the man returned to the Prophet and repeated his sentence.
The Prophet asked him:
Didn’t you pray with us? The man answered: Yes. The Prophet said: “Allah has forgiven you your sin.”
Ibn Al-Qayyim commented that this man came in a state of repentance without being asked by anybody, so Allah forgave him and the Prophet did not apply the punishment to him for the crime that he confessed. (Ibn Al-Qayyim, Ilam Al-Muwaqin an Rabb Al-Alamin, Beirut: Dar Al-Jil, 1973, vol. 2, p. 98.)
The Importance of Context
Then, the punishment for public adultery, itself, is mentioned in the following verse:
{As for the adulteress and the adulterer flog each of them with a hundred stripes, and let not compassion with them keep you from [carrying out] this law of God, if you [truly] believe in God and the Last Day.} (An-Nur 24:2)
However, as I always write, one cannot possibly cite one verse of the Quran for a certain ruling and overlook the other verses on the very same topic.
In my view, narrow considerations of some verses and overlooking others concerning the same topic, is one of the main problems with current scholarship in Islamic law.
Therefore, we must recall the other verses that deal with the same topic in order to understand all of them correctly and put them all in one context.
The above verse is not the only verse that mentions specific punishments for adultery.
There are two other verses that mention two other punishments.
{And as for those of your women who become guilty of immoral conduct of adultery, call upon four from among you who have witnessed their guilt; and if these bear witness thereto, confine the guilty women to their houses until death takes them away or God opens for them a way through repentance.} (An-Nisaa’ 4:15)
Also:
{And chastise both of the guilty adulterer parties; but if they both repent and mend their ways, leave them alone: for, behold, God is an acceptor of repentance, a dispenser of grace.} (An-Nisaa’ 4:16)
So, the punishments that are mentioned in the scripts, if adultery is proven, are: “a hundred stripes”, “confinement”, or simply “chastisement”, unless they repent and “mend their ways”.
Many scholars say that the hundred stripes punishment abrogated the two other, lighter, punishments.
However, other scholars believed that all of them are valid, and that there is no evidence for such abrogation. (Al-Razi, Al-Tafseer Al-Kabeer)
Thus, the hundred stripes remain as a sort of a maximum punishment in the extreme and scandalous cases of adultery.
Please continue reading the third and final part at the link here.
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