The concept of Sharia
Code & The Stoning Penalty
Introduction
Islamic
Sharia Code is raising, nowadays, in the west many arguments. Some non-Muslims
say it’s cruel or harsh. Muslims (non-Arabic Language natives), in their tries
to defend the Sharia Code, hurry up to deny some of the codes like The Code of
Stoning for adultery done by “Mohssan” without complete knowledge or correct
understanding of the Sharia and its sources. And they try to give the mind
(with its imperfection) the upper control upon The Sharia that came from the
creator who created us and sent the Sharia as the Manual Catalogue of Humans to
work in a perfect way to achieve the purpose he created them for.
Most of
the mistakes in reaching results or opinions in Sharia come from the lack of
understanding of the concept of prophecy, the concept of The Prophet being a
legislator and the rank of his Sonnah (which is what the prophet did, said or
agreed with) in Sharia. These mistakes also come from the unawareness of the
Science of “Ossoul Fekh” which is the science that gives the methodology of
getting the rules of Sharia from its sources. This point is covered in my small
book “Questions from my non-Arab brother” (still in Arabic only).
Most of Muslims don’t understand the philosophy of penalties (The Sharia
Code) in Islam. They think that we apply Sharia to cut the hands of thieves,
killing murderers and giving adulterers the Code. But God put The Sharia Code to restrain, check, hold back, deter and to
prevent people from doing such crimes by executing this Code in very ridged
conditions. And we will take The Sharia Code for Adultery as an example.
The definition of the Sharia
Code:
The word in Arabic is “Hodood.” And its
literal translation is “Borders.” And borders means the line separates between
things or areas. And in Sharia “The Border” means the red line fixed by Sharia
to stop people from making crimes. And who crosses the border deserves “The
Had” which is the penalty, determined by The Sharia of God, suitable for each
crime.
The cause of fixing “Hodood”:
To keep
the vital needs of man, to live in a society, which are protecting life,
property, mind, honor, and religion.
The purpose of having The
Sharia Code “Hodood”:
It
is to restrain, check, hold back, deter, and to prevent people from doing such
crimes by executing the “Hodood” in very ridged conditions.
Because of that, the penalties, implied in any law, become successful when they are not executed except for every now and then.
The penalties in The Sharia Code are meant only to stop crimes from happening.
That’s why God “The merciful for his
creatures” fixed penalties to be in proportion with the grade of the crimes
because if the penalties are not enough deterring, crimes will be more frequent
and the creatures of God will suffer. Also the criminals are cleansed and
purified by suffering the penalty. So, they come in the Judgment Day clean of
what they did.
In Islam, the life after death
is the continuity of this life because life doesn’t end by death. God, in The
Holy Qura’an, and the prophet in his Sayings gave us clear and certain
information about life after death and the judgment day. It is not a hazy,
foggy, and cloudy idea like it is in Judaism and Christianity.
Just imagine if you are thinking of
steeling one million dollars. If you know that if you get arrested you will
stay in jail for 2 or 3 years, you may say it worth it. But if you know that if
you will get arrested, your hand will be cut off. Would you take the same
decision?
The fruit of having “Hodood”:
1.
Removing
corruption from the society.
2.
Protecting
lives from being perished.
3.
Protecting
people from being disgraced and descendants being suspected.
4.
Protecting
property from being taken away unjustly.
5.
Protecting
minds from being damaged by drinking alcohol and having drugs.
The result of having “Hodood”:
It is the abstention
of people from making actions that corrupt Earth.
The crimes that deserve
penalties (Hodood):
1.
Adultery and
homosexuality.
2.
Theft.
3.
Defamation.
4.
Drinking
Alcohol.
5.
Killing –
Injuries.
The Sharia definition:
It
happens by a full intercourse between a male who has sexual desire and a
desirable female who has sexual desire outside the wedlock.
Why it’s prohibited:
As adultery is one of the most repugnant crimes committed in the society
against the system given by God, which upgrades man from being like low rank
animals, it has many parties to be affected with it:
1.
The person
after satisfaction left with sense of unfulfillment and guilt.
2.
His family
or at least his parents.
3.
The husband
or wife, so, marriage is destroyed, and descendants are suspected.
4.
The most
important party is the child who is the result and the main victim of this
repugnant crime. A single mother raises him. So, he loses his natural right to
be raised between two parents in a normal family. He becomes, in most of the
cases, a spoiled rotten part of the society’s body.
Single mothers: This phenomenon is mainly caused by is adultery
under the fake term:
Sexual freedom: which implies also no commitment to the
marriage, the other party, or the resulting children.
First: The sexual freedom is against all
the rules of all religions.
Second: As a result, the disjunction of
families occurs or the family is never established.
Third: Resulting children are without a
known father to them who should give them what they need of love, care,
keeping, protection, model, leadership, and attention, they become men and
women to be characterized by violence and committing savagery crimes because
they are not psychologically balanced.
In a statistic by UN, the percentage of the children born outside the wedlock in 2001:
1.
32 % in
England.
2.
38 % in
France.
3.
51 % in
Sweden.
That is for example.
If the single mother gave them up,
substitute families will adopt them. They change their names and they never
know their real parents. So, anyone may meet his own sister and marry her or
have free sex together. Do you imagine that?
In Islam, God ordered Muslims in such
cases, to have children resulting from adultery, to be related to their fathers
without changing their names.
The concept of freedom:
What does it mean?
First of all, freedom doesn’t mean that I
just do what ever I like or think, that it gives me pleasure regardless of the
consequences, but I must not cause harm to anyone, as in the case of the children
resulting from adultery.
But true freedom means that I can satisfy
my needs according to the Human Manual (The Sharia) that God, The Creator who
knows what is good for me and what is not, what fixes me and what doesn’t, gave
us to follow to achieve the purpose he created us for.
The punishment for adulterer
and adulteress:
First: The “Mohssan”:
Who is “Mohssan”?
All
Imams of Islam (the great scientists of Sharia), not only the Greatest Four,
had the same definition and the same conditions to consider someone “a
Mohssan.” These conditions are:
1.
Freedom (not a
slave).
2.
Sexual maturity.
3.
He / she has no
mental or psychic disturbances.
4.
Must be married
to another “Mohssan.”
5.
He / she must
have a full, complete and normal intercourse with his / her wife / husband
under all previous conditions are existing during that first intercourse.
The certainty of the Stoning Penalty for
“Mohssan”:
All
Imams of Islam, without a single exception, agreed that any “Mohssan” man or a
woman falls in the crime of adultery must be stoned to death according to the
confirmed Sayings and Deeds of the Prophet.
Some contemporary
people say, “May be the Prophet stopped The Penalty of Stoning after the verses
of the Penalty of Flogging and the Second Great and Just Khalifa “Omar Ibn
El-Khattab” restarted it after the Prophet.
We simply
answer them:
It never came to all Muslims knowledge that any of the companions of The
Prophet objected to The Stoning Penalty during the ruling of “Omar” and neither
before him nor after him, in spite of the freedom in his ruling period.
That freedom enabled
a woman to object to “Omar” when he was mistaken, according to The Holy
Qura’an, by fixing the amount of dowry to make marriage easier. And he accepted
her objection simultaneously and said his famous saying, “The woman is right,
and Omar is wrong.”
The Flogging Penalty:
It is fixed for the
“Non-Mohssan” (who is not fulfilling all the five conditions of the “Mohssan.”
And it varies between 50 for slaves and 100 whips for “Non-Mohssan” free
persons.
The penalty for slaves:
Some
contemporary people also say that the verses of The Holy Qura’an, which tells
that the married slaves, must have half of the penalty of “Mohssan.” And The
Death penalty can’t be divided into halves.
We answer:
1.
The words of the
Arabic Language have different uses.
For example the word “Mohssan” has two meanings. It’s
used to mention marriage and also it’s used to mention the definition of
“Mohssan” we explained before.
2.
The Prophet in
his Sayings and orders explained the two meanings and their uses in The Sharia.
3.
The Prophet fixed
the penalty for adultery for slaves by flogging them fifty whips.
4. All Imams agreed that slaves aren’t “Mohssan” because one of necessary five conditions of the “Mohssan” state is missing which is freedom.
Proving adultery crime:
It can be proved only
by three ways:
1. Confession. And the judge must ask the confessor four times to withdraw his / her confession and tries to put excuses and suspicions on his / her mouth. If he / she is still insisting to confess the crime, the judge gives him / her the sentence. But the confession of one party of the adultery is not a proof or an evidence to convict the second party if he / she didn’t confess.
2.
Four witnesses must witness that they saw, with no doubt, his penis was in her vagina.
And if anyone of them said that he thinks that he didn’t see properly, there is
no “Had” (penalty).
3.
Pregnancy outside the wedlock. If the woman said that she had the sexual intercourse
against her free will, the penalty drops. And if she said that she didn’t know
that having sexual intercourse with her ex-husband without remarrying is
forbidden, the penalty drops also.
For
cases No. 2 & 3, if the adulterer or the adulteress say that they never
ever knew that adultery is forbidden by Sharia and he / she lives in a place or
a country where the knowledge for Sharia is not well known, also the penalty
drops.
The principle of: “suspicions stop penalty”:
The Prophet ordered
all judges after him that if there is suspicions or doubts in any case, they
should drop the penalty.
Also, the great and
just Second Khalifa “Omar Ibn El-Khattab” said, “I like more to drop a penalty
for suspicions, than to administer it based on suspicions.”
Who is authorized to administer penalties?
The
Sharia gives this authority to the top ruler of the country or to who
represents him like governors of states. That’s because the ruler has enough
power to protect him of revenge based on Non-Sharia Code.