The Woman Who Asked to Be Purified

If there are four witnesses witnessing penetration — and they have to be just witnesses, people recognised as upright in the community — then she is punished. But it is impossible, guaranteed.

And there is a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) that a woman in his time came and confessed to him, and he turned away. And then she came again, and he turned away, until she had confessed four times. And then he said: are you with child? And she said: yes. He said: go and have your child. She came back after a year, having given birth to the child, and she said: ṭahhirnī, purify me. And then he said: go and nurse your child. She went for two years. She came back, and she said: purify me.

Because there is an idea in Islam that if you do a grave wrong action — not a minor wrong action, a grave wrong action — and you have the ḥadd punishment in this world, you are not punished for it in the next world. So what she was saying is: I do not want to take chances of being — whether Allah forgives me or not, I want to be certain that I do not have this in the next world. She said: purify me.

The woman was stoned. And one of the companions said: may Allah curse her. And the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: do not say that; because if her blood was spread over this city, there would not be a wrong action remaining in the city. In other words, her repentance was so great that this entire city would be forgiven, had they got a portion of her repentance.

Now, there is another thing. If a person leaves the pit, then there is no stoning. For a person who confessed, if they leave the pit, then you have to cease stoning. Stoning, it is guaranteed, is very rare in Islamic history. Very few cases. Really. If they get out during the process, you have to stop. In other words, a person can say: no, no, I have changed my mind. At any time.

What takes place in some countries today is unacceptable; it is a gross breach of Islamic law. They do implement it, but it is a gross breach. You cannot just apply the sharīʿah piecemeal. It is a total system. And within a healthy Islamic culture, those things are very rare.