Stoning is an act of betrayal against Islam.
“And when ever, one person spoils the life of only one other human being with the intension of murder or killing for creating necrosis and corruption it is like committing murder against the entire human kind.”
<<The Holy Koran, verse 32, Chapter 5>>
“The penalty of stoning is a custom from the Ancient times before the middle Ages.”
Part one
In the Holy Koran, the supreme God, has announced a subject about the social life of a society and the law and order for Islamic punishments and here I will tell you about this matter.
However before we go in to this subject we must know that inside a democratic system the highest distinctive feature is the independence of the Department of Justice, for protecting and keeping the justice; without being under the influence of any other power. It means that a judge must have his attention towards God before giving a sentence, and by no means being under the influence of anyone, this is the characteristic of an ideal society where fairness is upheld. This is written in many places in the Holy Koran, where God points out the importance of this subject (verse 25, chapter 57) or (verse 26, chapter 38) when it says: The sign of a healthy society and fairly justice one is how well the truth (fairness and purpose) is maintained in that society. So here we want to, with this logic that we understand from the Holy Koran examine and get to know degeneration and corruption, because in another part of the Koran (verse 41, chapter 30) we read:
“The things that people practice with there own hands will lead to corruption on earth and the seas.”
What kind of dissolution and corruption? In the manner that a system instead of creating a social environment on the basis of fairness, creating it on oppression. It means that any time oppression takes the place of justice, and fairness is replaced by unfairness then automatically corruption will rule. In particular inside a society that corruption and promotion of corruption has found a systematic way, this will only increase the degeneration. Now, the worst of all this is a system where corruption instead of correctness, states to be the truth and corruption start to spread with the name of rightness, this is the worst kind of system. A system that refuses God and doomsday and says this is how life is; this is the world, end of story. (Verse 24, chapter 45)
This is how it is. But a system that believes in God and the last day can´t do what ever it pleases. The forces that carry out the laws must not only be subordinate to the laws and not do what ever they want but on top of the laws they must uphold God and holy intentions that is based on educating human beings. So now we come to the punishments of Islam where people who want to create an Islamic order and think at least for them self that if we get the power of a country, we want to uphold the Islamic justice so that no one gets oppressed and in this way become an example to the world creating an order where ethics and human rights is supported and encouraged.
Now we reach the stage where we describe the particular features that must exist within this system and the things that can not be existent. So now we have become aware of that God has mentioned stoning twice in the Holy Koran, where stoning is presented as an anti unitary act that is against the human values of Islam and in contradiction to Islam. It is introduced as a way to spread fear and dread among people used by the dictators of that time, which means it was used by those who did not believe in God and those who wanted to stay in power using force and violence. What time? In the time of antiquity!
This indicates that the law of Stoning or Lapidation belongs to the ancient times before the middle age, the time when the Holy prophet Jesus lived. In that time it was a common punishment for adultery among some tribes, and there was one time when they accused a woman for having sex before marriage and brought her to the Holy Jesus and wanted to stone her, but he prevented them and told them not to do this, and that the one who wants to throw the first stone must have never committed a sin himself. But as a total the opinion of Islamic Juristic experts is that Stoning can not be done because the “crime” of this punishment can not be proved. Since four witnesses that have seen the act of intercourse with there own eyes is needed and that they have to be honest people as well. So without the testimony of eyewitnesses it can not be sentenced, unless the person himself confesses to the act and in this case if he regrets and says that his confession was false then the judge can not proceed. It means that the sexual intercourse can not be confirmed; so a punishment can not be sentenced and carried out. The Holy prophet Jesus said: Keep away from this punishment and abandon this act (in that time!), but the people who did not listen to Jesus and did not see him as the messenger of God, continued with this act. So time goes by and we come to the time when the Christians where persecuted by the roman emperor, as a result of this, the seven sleepers of the cave that where in fact the students of Jesus went into hiding inside a cave and in the Koran it says: “Be careful so that they don’t find out about our secret (when they wanted to enter the city) because then they will sentence us to stoning or make us leave our faith of the union with God” and this is the reason they went to the cave in the first place. Because in those days the rulers did not believe in God and in Jesus to be the messenger of God and thus persecuted the Christians, the dictators, the people of force and violence, the rulers, they were those who used this kind of repression to create a calm cemetery environment in the society. This is one of the stories.
In The Holy Koran there is another occasion mentioned where three saints where send out by The Holy Jesus to invite people. Refer to the story in chapter 36 of The Holy Koran.
When these three messengers send out by Jesus went into a village for inviting people to union of God with the order given by The Holy Jesus, they where stopped by the ruling class, those who claimed power with force, and where told to turn around and that they could not establish contact with the people of that village, and threatened them if you insist to stay here we will punish you to Stoning and you will receive horrible tortures from us.
You can read the rest of this story for your self when one of the village people goes out and accepts the invitation of the saints and is later tortured and killed and after this goes to heaven and says, I hope that people knew that God has received me with such merci and compassion so that they would not stay under the tyranny of the oppressors. So these are some subjects mentioned in the Holy Koran about the Stoning. Dear friends, in these chapters from the Koran stoning is mentioned as a punishment that existed within the society, but the act of stoning is mentioned on different places is the Koran for example the stoning of the devil where it says that the devil has been subject to the anger of God and thus the stone of wrath has been thrown against the window of his destiny. But here we are talking about Stoning as a punishment; Stoning in The Holy Koran is mentioned as a punishment in the societies that did not believe in God and was carried out by the dictators and the oppressors of the ruling class. There is no where in The Holy Koran that says a prophet came to the people and told them to believe in one God and union of God or you will be punished by Stoning, or don’t drink alcohol or you will be punished with Stoning, or stop doing bad things or I will stone you. On the contrary, the Holy Koran tells about the tyrants that miss used there position in power to create a cemetery environment in the society and accused people of adultery or accused them of other things and afterwards carried out the Stoning in front of other people so that others could see and made them participate in the stoning, and ordered them to pick small rocks to throw so that the person would gradually die and be a repellent example for others who disagrees with the authorities. Dear friends, the point we want to make here is that, there is no foundation for stoning as an Islamic punishment in the Holy Koran that creates the pillar of Islam. It means that Stoning has no basis in the Koran. Stoning is not supported as an Islamic punishment in the Holy Koran. So it can be a feature of a non-Islamic system but it can not exist within an Islamic system. So how is it possible that someone in the Islamic republic stands up with a will of his own and says: I want to perform Stoning?
This is not hearsay; this is not an accusation or an allegation towards the government. It is undeniable. Minister of Justice in Iran has him self told that during his supervision of the department of justice, there was one occasion when stoning took place in Qazvin, where they buried a man waist down in the middle of the ground and collected other people and told them to throw stones against his head until he dies.
And then they blamed the judge of that region, has the judge of that region come from Mars? Is he from the Moon? Is he not from earth so that he can do as he pleases; are there no laws in the Islamic republic? Is not the Department of Justice one of the three independent departments in Iran? Does this department have no legal embassies? Is it not the instrument of justice?
If it is?! Then how can a person being the judge of a city sentence one of the citizens of Iran to stoning and kill him? This is murder in the name of Islam, this makes Islam look bad, and this is like a stain on the name of Islam.
I wrote a letter about this subject and this letter later on spread on the internet and the Muslims that could read this letter where amazed, because they thought if Azmayesh is telling the truth then why is stoning a part of the Islamic laws that where active in Iran and brought so much shame and embarrassment to Iran and worst of all to the name of Islam. The juristic experts of Islamic studies have all come to the conclusion that even if a certain law exists within Islam but performing it has a negative effect on the name of Islam then it must not proceed. But here we have something that has no real ground in Islam according to Dr. Azmayesh and at the same time tarnish to Islam. For this reason they set out to ask the authorities about this subject, and the Islamic experts in Iran answered with clear fatwa’s.
They all agreed that the foundation of Stoning has no source in the Holy Koran, and that the basis for stoning comes from old sayings (Rewajat) and that this punishment is not doable and should be replaced.
But what I am saying here today is that not only does stoning have no basis in The Holy Koran, but The Holy book refers to stoning as a non-Islamic practice and reveals that it is an act done by the dictators and oppressors of the ancient times.
The only place where stoning can not exist is the Islamic republic of “Iran” and the only place that this is still done is “Iran” and the only place that has been subject to the international blemish for this vile anti-human, non-Islamic, non-ethical and anti-Koran act is “Iran”, how is this possible?
Mr. Ayatollah Shahroodi (Minister of Justice) how long do we have to endure this condition?
In times of “Nanotechnology”, stoning is the last stone from the stone ages that is still thrown in Iran.
With the title of “Minister of Justice” don’t let this vile act to be responsible for the delusion of dear Islam anymore.
Part two
As mentioned before the letter that spread on the internet had a lot of positive effect and a lot of people where shocked to read about this fact, dear interested friends that where astonished had obviously a lot of questions and answering these are of outmost importance. Here are some of those questions that we received.
Questions
One of our viewers asks:
If the punishment of Stoning does not exist in the Koran, then how did it during history get to be recognized as an Islamic act?
Is there any verse that confirms this?
Another viewer has mentioned some questions:
Is it so that all illicit acts before Islam where sentenced to stoning or was it only the punishment for adultery?
Why it is so that Muslims have stoning as a punishment for only adultery and where does the regulation for the size of the stones that is used in stoning come from? Is there a law mentioned about this in The Koran?
<<Answers to the questions>>
Dear friends I wish your health and happiness where ever you are.
There where some different questions mentioned that I will now answer. Dear friends, one of these questions is about the contradiction between verses of The Holy Koran and “old stories” commonly known as “Rewajat”. For better understanding of this I will explain the four pillars of Islamic laws:
So we have four sources, but now we know that The Koran is one of the sources but the question here is why it counts as the most important? This is because The Holy Koran is the foundation of religion. The Holy Koran is the essence of the spiritual path. The Holy Koran is composed by verses that are divided: The Firm ones, where the meaning of these is clear to the reader and The Bashful ones where the meaning is not so clear and interpretation is needed, so it is here that we must first understand the verses of The Holy Koran and then be able to confirm rules from them. But all of this is collected from The Koran. So now we want to extract rules from the Koran, for situations that we encounter when technology brings up new subjects, for example “Cloning” or “Insemination”; these are subjects that did not exist before and for that reason there could not be any laws applied to them, because the evolution of technology had not reach where it is now and science was not at the level it is today, so there are no laws that mention such issues. But now days the Muslims want to know how to deal with such topics according to Islamic laws, when we encounter them in modern times?
Thus the Islamic scholars come together and extract a regulation, from where? From The Holy Koran, and then from the custom of the Prophet and the things that where mentioned above.
But naturally the traditions of the Great Prophet is the living and speaking Koran, it means that looking at the life of the prophet, the things he did, the things he said, his behavior and his advices all together takes us closer to the Koran and to better understand the Holy Koran, not that the custom of the prophet is God forbid against the Koran, that for instance the prophet says something and the Koran another thing and then we have to think which one to choose, it is not like this at all.
Now we come to the contradiction between the verses of the Koran and old stories (rewajat), what is rewajat? Ones the prophet said: “I am like a city of knowledge and Ali is the door to this city”, this is the exact words of the prophet mainly called a “Hadith”. The things that the prophet articulated come in four categories:
So there are everyday words and the words uttered with a divine reason, so when the prophet said: “I am like a city of knowledge and Ali is the door to this city” or “Those who follow me, from now on follow Ali” these are the words of the prophet himself that he spoke in front of people and spread from that moment. Within these there are lessens to be learned, there are subjects about his followers, about the laws that Muslims should apply to, but there is also another topic called Rewajat.
Now I will give you an example of this so that you can see the difference between Hadith that belong to the Great Prophet and his descendents, as a total the Hadith and news mentioned about the prophet and 14 innocents of his household come in several versions, there are Hadith that is weak, extinct Hadith, insignificant Hadith and true Hadith. And there are those who know the Hadiths and the technique required to identify them and place them in the right category but telling about this will take us to far from our focus. So it means that there are a lot of subjects told and then associated to the prophet and that the one who has knowledge about the Hadiths is able to distinguish between the real ones that the prophet has spoken and the fake ones that the person invented for himself and then related them to the prophet. So if the topic of Hadith is fairly clear we can continue with “Rewajat”.
Dear friends, “Rewajat” is a “story” that a narrator tells that for example, the prophet sat down with some of his disciples and then a person that was one of the unbelievers with the name Nazr ebne Harece came in and insulted the prophet and then the prophet speaks to him and then he trembles and runs away, this is a “Rewajat”.
So now there are some people who want to look into a Rewajat and to extract a rule from it, this is the topic that is related to our subject that is Stoning.
It is told in one of these Rewajat that two persons came to the prophet and told him that we have had committed adultery and now we want to know what to do, the prophet asks them of there religious belief and they tell him the ritual of Jewish faith so the prophet tells them to act according to there own rituals and because they had stoning in there tradition as punishment for this specific issue, some people want to come to the conclusion that the prophet in his own time has sentenced stoning. This is Rewajat dear friends there is no Hadith involved, there are no verses from the Koran involved, here a narrator comes and tells a story of how it was and then another person comes along and wants to extract a law from this and says, because it does not exist in the Koran we can turn our attention towards this old story. Now who was this person that told this story? We have to investigate this and see to what extend there is truth in this Rewajat or how weak it is. After this examine to see if it is related to the Muslims or not? Because it is linked to another subject, like the time of the Imam Jafar Sadeq (6th Imam) when they come to him and told him about a man and a woman within the same family that wanted to get married, this fact was forbidden among Muslims but it was done by the Zoroastrians of that time, so he asks them what is there faith? They answer Zoroastrian faith, and he tells them that this is not forbidden among Zoroastrians and to let them act according to there own belief and that it has nothing to do with Islam. You see here we can not take this and say for this reason the marriage of brother and sister is legal in Islam.
No it is not legal and this is written in The Holy Koran as well but they where not followers of the Koran. It is the same with the story mentioned about the Jewish couple that was told in the Rewajat but the thing discussed here is that is it possible for a “Rewajat” to go against the verses of The Holy Koran? And if so, what has to be done? It is like the example about marriage within one family.
The discussion here is that there are no prophets that came and said if someone commits a sin or adultery will be sentenced to stoning, something like this is not written in the Holy Koran. If stoning is mentioned in the Koran it is not within the context of the practice of the prophets. For this reason it is not like the Koran agrees with stoning, it is not like the Koran is silent about the subject, the Koran is not quiet it has a negative viewpoint towards stoning. So when an old story (Rewajat) explains the situation in this manner and goes against the verses of the Koran, that clearly explain the act of stoning as the practice of the dictators of ancient times, when these two stand in contradiction to each other we can not put the Koran aside and say that this is what the Rewajat says. No, we have to take the Koran in our hands and say that this “Rewajat” is unreliable.
I will tell you another Rewajat where the narrator says: Aisha the wife of the prophet told that we had a bed that I and the prophet rested on and the verse that should be in the Koran related to stoning was written on a tree leaf on this bed and after the prophet passed away, a lot of people came and the house got crowded so a goat came and ate the leaf and the verse was lost, however it existed. And then a bunch of people say that this verse existed and then vanished so we must act according to it.
About this Rewajat, dear friends, you have to take the guidance of your reason. As a matter of fact the Koran was not written, Koran was recited and people memorized the Koran by heart, Koran literally means reciting and was later written into a book. They had a lot of the verses by heart and then later on when they wanted to teach the Koran it was written into a book. It is not like they took what was written here and there and combined those to make a book. For this reason if such verse was real at least ten or fifteen of the prophet’s disciples that lived during the making of the book of Koran would have heard about it. It is not like the prophet or another person writes down the verses in secret on a leaf so that a goat can come and eat it. So it is clear that this Rewajat is very weak it is not possible to extract a regulation from this. The prophet himself have never ordered stoning, there are no Hadith from him saying it. As a result we don’t have any Muslim punished by stoning with the order of the prophet and he has never sentenced a Muslim to stoning and in the books of Hadith that consist of the prophet’s statements and news and is acceptable to both Shiites and Sunnis there is not one incident mentioned that The Great Prophet has ordered stoning as a punishment for adultery, this have never happened, not once.
So there is no connection to the prophet, it is not mentioned in the Koran and not in the prophets advices (Hadith nabavi) and there is no trace of it in the prophets sayings that Gabriel told him (hadith qudsi) either. And we examine those two weak stories (Rewajat) it becomes clear that we can not find a point where we can extract a regulation so that a rule can be applied as an Islamic punishment. This area was about the general social laws.
So the difference between verses of the Koran and Rewajat becomes clear. It becomes clear that whenever there is a contradiction between a verse and a Rewajat, there is no uncertainty that we must act according to the verse, there is no doubt! There is no doubt; there is no place for hesitation. It means that getting to know Islam must be required through The Holy Book of Koran.
The source and the foundation and the pillar of Islam is The Holy Koran, nothing else and it is said in the Koran that if Muslims go back to the Koran and refer to The Holy Koran there they will find the source of unity. But the problem is that, in a lot of schools and classes where Islam is taught, Rewajat has found a more important place then the Koran. In fact there are a lot of people who come to conclusions totally based on Rewajat and they do not care for the Koran at all. It means that, and here we recite from the Koran: “The Koran is old-fashion in there opinion” (chapter 30). When we put the Koran in the center and want to investigate under the light of Koran and then extract regulations or come to conclusions, stoning is not mentioned and it is not mentioned in the custom of the Great Prophet either and he was the first teacher of the teachings of the Koran. So there is no place left for the continuation of stoning as an Islamic punishment with the Koran as a foundation.