Rejection of Rajm by Amin Ahsan Islahi

 بِسۡمِ اللّٰہِ الرَّحۡمٰنِ الرَّحِیۡمِ

اَلۡحَمۡدُ لِلّٰہِ رَبِّ الۡعٰلَمِیۡنَ

والصلاة والسلام عليك يا سيدي يا رسول الله

In the Name of Allah, the Rahman, the Merciful

All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the Worlds

Blessing and Peace upon You, my Master, the Apostle of Allah

Continuing the discussion on the misguided Amin Ahsan Islahi; like a typical modernist, reformist he denied the punishment of rajm (stoning to death) for the one guilty of adultery. 

The first group of Muslims to deviate in this matter were the misguided Khawarij, especially the extremist Azariqah, who denied the punishment of stoning for adultery on the basis that such a punishment is not explicit from the text of the Holy Quran.

Ibn Abd al-Karim al-Shahrstani (d. 548 H), may Allah have mercy on him, mentions this point about the Azariqah faction of Kharijites:

إسقاط الرجم عن الزاني إذ ليس في القرآن ذكره

“Nullification of the stoning of the adulterer, as it is not mentioned in the Quran.” (al-Milal wal-Nihal, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, Beirut, Lebanon, p.115)

Incidentally, Amin Ahsan Islahi admits that it was the Khawarij who denied the punishment of stoning for adultery, and did not accept the restriction of the punishment of flogging for fornication as mentioned in the Quran for the unmarried fornicator only:

چنانچہ خوارج اس نسخ یا تخصیص کو نہیں مانتے، وہ رجم کا انکار کرتے ہیں

“The Khawarij do not accept this abrogation or specification. They reject stoning.” (Tadabbur Quran, Faran Foundation, Lahore, Pakistan, v.5, p.365)

Amin Ahsan Islahi, in his commentary on the opening verses of Surat al-Nur which ordain the flogging a hundred stripes for the male and for the female found guilty of fornication, argues against the jurists of the Four Schools (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali) who hold it to be the punishment for pre-marital fornication only and not adultery (extra-marital).

In his analysis of the Ahadith mentioning some of the instances in which the Prophet Muhammad, sall Allahu alayhi wasallam, had individuals guilty of adultery stoned to death, he claims they are either instances of rape or other extenuating and extreme circumstances in which execution is justified as a means of preventing spreading of corruption in the land and a breakdown of law and order.

In short, Amin Ahsan Islahi dissented from the consensus of the Four Schools, and therefore, from the consensus of Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah, that the statutory punishment for adultery according to the Islamic Shari’ah is rajm—stoning to death. By his own admission, he therefore agreed with the extremist Kharijites on this issue.

Amin Ahsan Islahi mentioned some false jurisprudential principles in the course of his written discussion on this problem in his disastrous tafsir “Tadabbur Quran”; he claimed an ordinance in the Holy Quran may only be abrogated or restricted in application by another verse of the Quran, and not by any Hadith or reported Sunnah of the Prophet, sall Allahu alayhi wasallam.

Another so-called scholar who rejected rajm as part of the Shari’ah was Muhammad Abu Zahra (1898-1974), a lecturer at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University. According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, during a conference in Al-Bayda, Libya, in 1972, Muhammad Abu Zahra proclaimed:

هذا الرأي يتعلق بقضية الرجم للمحصن في حد الزنا فرأيي أن الرجم كان شريعة يهودية أقرها الرسول في أول الأمر ثم نسخت بحد الجلد في سورة النور

“This opinion concerns the issue of stoning for a married person convicted of adultery. In my view, stoning was a Judaic law that the Prophet initially endorsed, but it was subsequently abrogated by the prescribed punishment of flogging, as set forth in Surat al-Nur.”

Sunni Muslims must beware of such charlatans masquerading as teachers of the Quran or wearing the gown of knowledge while disseminating views that are contrary to the consensus of the classical Sunni schools and jurists.

The punishment of rajm for adultery is an established ordinance in the Shari’ah. It was carried out by the Holy Prophet Muhammad, sall Allahu alayhi wasallam, and his rightly-guided Caliphs, radi Allahu anhum. Even if the text of the Holy Quran does not explicitly mention a punishment of stoning for adultery, the Sunnah of the Prophet and his rightly-guided Caliphs is sufficient to establish it as a permanent Hadd for adultery as per the Shari’ah.

Those who reject rajm and argue that it is a Biblical or Judaic law should know that many of the laws from the divine Law of Moses have been continued and not abrogated in the Shari’ah of Prophet Muhammad, sall Allahu alayhi wasallam. The root of the objection to rajm from the modernists and reformists does not actually stem from its omission in the text of the Holy Quran, but from favoring Western and so-called “humanistic” standards of morality over that of the Sunnah.