Stoning in Islam
Stoning
In Islam, stoning (Arabic: رجم, romanized: rajm) is the Hudud punishment wherein an organized group throws stones at a convicted individual until that person dies. Under some versions of Islamic law (Sharia), it is the prescribed punishment in cases of Zina committed by a married person which requires either a confession from either the adulterer or adulteress, or producing four witnesses of sexual penetration.
The punishment of stoning as a capital punishment for adultery is unique in Islamic law in that it conflicts with the Qur'anic prescription for premarital and extramarital sex (zina) found in Surah An-Nur, 2: "The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication - flog each of them with a hundred stripes". For this reason some minority Muslim sects such as the former Kharijites, and Islamic modernists such as the Quranists disagree with the legality of stoning.
However, stoning is mentioned in multiple hadiths (reports claiming to quote what Muhammad said verbatim on various matters, which most Muslims and Islamic scholars consider an authoritative source second only to Quran as a source of religious law and rulings), and therefore most schools of Islamic jurisprudence accept it as a prescribed punishment for adultery. The punishment has been rarely applied in the history of Islam owing to the very strict evidential requirements stipulated by Islamic law.
Practice
Legal imposition of the stoning punishment was very rare in Islamic history. During the 623-year history of the Ottoman Empire, for which there are voluminous court records, there is only one recorded example of a judge sentencing a convict to death by stoning, and the ruling contravened Islamic law on at least two grounds (sufficient evidence was not produced, and a Jewish man was sentenced to death despite the law stating clearly that the death penalty for illegal sex should only be applied to Muslims). No sentences of stoning have been recorded in Syria during Muslim rule. In Ottoman Istanbul, only one instance of stoning ever took place, according to Ottoman records.
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