Death By Stoning; The Legal Process
Mass L. Usuf
Remember the revulsion and disgust with which our society reacted to the gruesome murder of that angel ‘Seya’ last September. Suggestions for the punishment of the accused at that time ranged from decapitation, to killing by torture, to stoning to death like in the Middle East. The rage was all over their faces and the revengeful fury of the public expressed in their loud voices.
Today, we are concerned about the sentence to death by stoning or lapidation of a Sri Lankan woman in Saudi Arabia. The crime, Adultery.Adultery or zina (in Arabic) is sexual intercourse between a man and a woman not married to each other. This can be classified as illegal sexual intercourse between two married persons or two unmarried persons (fornication) or one of them married and the other unmarried. Note the distinction between adultery and fornication. The married person, male or female will face the death penalty if proven.
An allegation leveled at the Sharia law is that the woman is sentenced to death and the man only sentenced to be flogged. This allegation is false as there is a distinction between adultery and fornication. For example in the present case if the woman was unmarried and the man married, then the man would have been awarded the death penalty. It must be stated that the evidential burden, explained below, to sentence a person to death for adultery is extremely high and very, very difficult to prove.
Like fishing in trouble waters, it would be grossly immoral for anyone to subtly capitalise these sensitive moments and sinisterly condemn Islam as having a barbaric penal system, as an archaic religion and so on. Each of these allegations can be rationally, scientifically and convincingly explained but this is not the place and time for this. Our focus now is to save the life of this woman. To do this we need to have an understanding of the law relating to the matter and I hope the thoughts below will be seen by the relevant people.
Perspective
In Islam, adultery is considered a great sin. It further opens the gate for many other social evils. The Kegalle High Court in December 2013 sentenced a woman and a man to death. The woman who had an extra marital affair conspired with her lover and had murdered her husband. The body was dumped in a toilet pit.
We have seen even in Sri Lanka, how it severely affects the family structure leading to quarrels, suspicion, disoriented children and even murder. Finally, the destruction of the family. It impacts on the laws of property, ruins the reputation of both parties, the dignity of the children and facilitates the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. It also dents the moral psychology of the persons.Read More
