The four witnesses for adultery
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Peace Huruf
I understand your example of Maryam better now. Thank you for clarifying this for me.
You said this, "On the other hand, getting to the bottomline of it all what does it matter whether we suffer because somebody is a sonofabitch or if we suffer because a cancer eats us away with horrible pains?"
I guess what I mean is, one type of suffering is inevitable where it is difficult to place blame or punish anyone in particular. Even in the case of Maryam, she would have had change the overall mentality of her society in order to escape from slander and judgement. The odds were against her. Also, I believe the punishment for zina in the Old Testament is a capital punishment? I don't think she could have done much but suffer, as she would have not had the support of anyone in her community. Sometimes we have to suffer because there is nothing that can be done. The society is not ready for change or reflection.
Still, I believe that some types of suffering can be avoided. If the suffering was to fulfill His will, then even if the four witnesses are dismissed, still God will find a way to fulfill His will. We cannot know what is His will for certainty. Perhaps, He wishes for us to try and change our own condition so that may we avoid this suffering.
I don't think His prescribed law is meant to punish the righteous or innocent, I believe the law is meant to punish the unrighteous because they have chosen to lie, slander, and can easily be charged with conspiracy to murder. However, if an innocent is punished, then I believe this knowledge is meant as a lesson to the people. In that, we as a people must be more careful and cautious as to how and for what reasons we inflict punishment and suffering upon another life. The only way to be more cautious of this is to have more checks and balances in our judiciary system. It may never be a perfect system, but it would be a system that strives to better itself.
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Peace
I apologize if this topic has already been discussed. You can close this thread and redirect to a thread with a similar topic in this case.
Okay, so you know how it is required to have four witnesses in order to prove adultery?
I was just wondering something about that in that, do the four witnesses need to bring forth any concrete proof? Or, can adultery be proven merely through eyewitness testimony? I would think that an eyewitness testimony void of any proof (video, pictures, etc) could easily be a lie orchestrated by a group of people against two individuals they collectively strongly dislike?
In my head I'm thinking, "who's going to commit adultery in front of four other people?" So, it has to be some weird situation on which a case could be built upon. ???
Please share your thoughts.
The goal here is to act as a deterence. generally the Quran prescribed proportional justice and not deterence but it did invoke deterence when it came to slander because as the case with all tribal societies accusing a wommen of sexual misconduct can carry great harm. The Quran is not interested about punishing adulterers as much as its interested on preventing slandering since the slanderer needs four witnesses or else he can be be held accountable for what he alleged. Whether the slanderer is saying the truth or not is not relevant.
The Quran meawhile dealt with adultery as both a grave sin and a crime but made the punishment for it symbolic more than anything. Lashing is not a joke and is considered a form of torture. The Quran allowed people to declare their disbelief if they are being tortured since the person is only doing so because he is being tortured and a person being tortured can not be held repsonsible for his actions. So whats stopping the same individual to lie even if under oath if he fears the punishment. He may want to admit and repent but is not sure he or she can handle 100 lashes. Most women, even if faithful, would rather lie.
So the Quran knows that most people will lie even under oath when facing the lash. It takes a special kind of person to admit something that can make him or her receive 100 lashes. Most people will simply lie as we know. So proving adultery is going to be very difficult even if one of the spouses caught the other in the act since their is still the need to swear by oath four times and other can do the same and most will lie to escape the punishment of lashing.
16.106. Whoever disbelieves in God after having believed ? not him who is under duress, while his heart is firm in and content with faith, but the one who willingly opens up his heart to unbelief ? upon them falls God's anger (His condemnation of them), and for them is a mighty punishment.
Well a hundred lashes is duress.
What the verses about adultery does do is prevent people from opening their mouth about someone else even if they actually saw something. Its a preventive measure.
As we know this is the only time the Quran used deterence and prevention as a form of justice. The Quran as we know uses proportional justice (eye for an eye) where the punishment should fit the crime and not an eye for an eye lash where the punishment is harsher than the crime.
Similar laws exist in the US usually for Blacks since historically many Blacks would be wrongfully persecuted and sometimes even lynched because of someone accusing them of something. Many Blacks found themselves in trouble because of slandering and false accusation. The US legal system introduced many civil rights laws to prevent this often stipulating mandatory sentences so Blacks do not get disproportionate justice when accused of a crime against a White person.
Men as we know can get away with sexual acts but women in Arab societies do not have that leisure and sometimes they have been killed by their own families because of rumors and gossips. Hence the need for deterence against slandering of married women.
So to summarize while the four witnesses made punishing anyone for adultery difficult it made punishing anyone for slander four times easier. Just like people will be tempted to lie about their adultery to escape the punishment, a person who saw something will do the same and remain silent to escape the punishment. We can take this deterence example as something specific to adultery or we can take that to apply to any situation where slandering and accusations alone can create harm for a third party.
"An honor killing, or honour killing is the homicide of a member of a family or social group by other members, due to the belief of the perpetrators that the victim has brought dishonor upon the family or community.
The perceived dishonor is normally the result of one of the following behaviors, or the suspicion of such behaviors dressing in a manner unacceptable to the family or community, wanting to terminate or prevent an arranged marriage or desiring to marry by own choice, especially if to a member of a social group deemed inappropriate, engaging in heterosexual acts outside marriage and engaging in homosexual acts.
Many women's groups in the Middle East and Southwest Asia suspect that more than 20,000 women are honor killed each year. "
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing
So we can see the harm this brings to many women when they find themselves being accused of sexual misconduct. Reading that article can be very disturbing.
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No. You guys got it all wrong. The penalty for adultery is not lashes. You're supposed to stone the people to death. It was in Quran but a goat at that verse. Here's the Hadith that informs us...
Sunan Ibn Majah, Book of Nikah, Hadith # 1934)Narrated Aisha 'The verse of stoning and of suckling an adult ten times were revealed, and they were (written) on a paper and kept under my bed. When the Messenger of Allah (SAWW.) expired and we were preoccupied with his death, a goat entered and ate away the paper."
Obviously I'm being sarcastic. Just wanted to share one of my favorite Hadith. I just love Islamic comedy!
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No. You guys got it all wrong. The penalty for adultery is not lashes. You're supposed to stone the people to death. It was in Quran but a goat at that verse. Here's the Hadith that informs us...
Sunan Ibn Majah, Book of Nikah, Hadith # 1934)Narrated Aisha 'The verse of stoning and of suckling an adult ten times were revealed, and they were (written) on a paper and kept under my bed. When the Messenger of Allah (SAWW.) expired and we were preoccupied with his death, a goat entered and ate away the paper."
Obviously I'm being sarcastic. Just wanted to share one of my favorite Hadith. I just love Islamic comedy!
Lol! Its amazing how few Muslims know about that.
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Peace Big Mo,
While God may intend to put the potential slanderer in check, is it not possible for the slanderers to conspire against another? Is it not possible for four individuals to conspire and give a believable eyewitness testimony? After all, in light of this verse, all we need are four testimonies. I don't need to ask them for pictures or video as per this law.
I can't just accept someone's hearsay. If they don't have their tangible proof, then I don't even want to entertain them.
There lies a danger in leaving so many loopholes in the law. If the law isn't as concrete as possible, there lays the possibility to manipulate more so.
Its happened before, it'll happen again, unless we get it right the first time. Let's get it right this time.
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Any witness can be questioned. That is what witnesses are for. And if there is the slightest possibility of the witnesses not being honest or authentic they whould be disregarded. That the Qur'an does not need to write, because it is a fundamental characteristic of witnessing and the reason why in any law system an only witness is nul. You need at least two witnesses so that you can check the testimony of one against the other and of course, whether it be one or twenty you can examine their testimony against any other element of evidence. They are liably with their testimony.
If witnesses testimony is taken as good without the slightest scrutiny, that is tampering with law and of course justice. The failure there would not be with any law requiring witnesses, but with the administrators of justice who disregard the fundamentals of ANY law system. If they do that, it is no question of theis law being good or bad, it does not matter because if people and the whole justice aparatus is going to trample with law, then no matter how good or bad is the law, it will reuslt in the same, because nolaw and no system is better than the people who apply. The best theoretical low system will be a catastrophe if it is not applied, or if it is wrogly applied and that is the persons who apply it who are the problem, not the system itself.
Salaam
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Peace
I agree that it's not necessarily the system that's the problem, but rather the people themselves. However, that's why the law needs to be as solid as possible. People suck.
We're relying on people to not be corrupt. We're replying on them to scrutinize the details and take their time. We're relying on them to be fair and just. When have the majority of people on this Earth ever been those things? What makes us think that those who interrogate the witnesses won't have a vested interest, and make false claims that the eyewitness accounts are thorough and entirely believable?
I don't have any problem with the requirement of 4 witnesses and a thorough interrogation of each witness. However, that's not "proven without a reasonable doubt", and that's what I believe in. For me, "proven without a reasonable doubt" for the accusation of adultery, is indeed tangible proof. That's the best that can be done, and even then, people can tamper with videos and pictures. Still, most people won't go to such great lengths.
God tells us to bring forth our proofs if we're truthful in another part of the Quran, so then why not this part as well? We've got such dire punishment at risk, and we're only requiring eyewitness accounts?