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Islam
sets very specific and clear-cut conditions to prove adultery.
(Reuters)
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FAIZABAD,
Afghanistan, April 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) –
The Afghan police are investigating the stoning to death of a woman for
allegedly committing adultery.
“We
have sent a delegation to the area to verify the truth of the
issue,” Lieutenant General Shah Jahan Noori, the provincial police
chief, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He
said the authorities would “strongly condemn this irresponsible
act” if confirmed.
Amina,
a 29 year-old married woman, was publicly stoned to death on Friday,
April 22, in Argo district to the west of Faizabad, the provincial
capital of Badakhshan, for adultery based on a decision of local
Mullah Mohammed Yusof.
A
witness, Mujibur Rahman, told Reuters that Amina was dragged out of
her parent's house by local officials and her husband who stoned her
to death while the man with whom she allegedly had an affair was
flogged 100 times and then freed.
Local
police said the woman's husband had recently returned from Iran after
five years away.
The
wife had reportedly asked her husband for a separation on the grounds
that he could not support her.
However,
the husband and his family alleged she was having an affair with
another man and took the law in their own hands.
Amina's
stoning was the first one in Afghanistan since President Hamid Karzai
was installed to power after the US-led forces overthrew the Taliban's
regime.
Killed
The
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), which has
also sent a team of investigators to the area, argued the woman was
not stoned but had been killed by the family of her husband.
“The
reports we have is the woman was killed by her husband's family for
having improper affairs with another person. The man who had relations
with her was lashed in public,” Nader Nadery, the commission's
spokesman, told AFP.
Provincial
deputy governor, Haji Shamsul-Rehman, said that even if it was
established the woman had been having an affair with another man, she
should have been stood on trial in a court and not condemned to death
by a local mullah.
Adultery
is forbidden in Islam, which places sentences ranging between flogging
to stoning to death on the adulterers unless they repent and change
their evil ways.
However,
people are not entitled to stone the adulterers by their own hands,
for it's the responsibility of the Muslim state and its concerned
bodies to do the punishment in order to maintain peace and security
and prevent chaos and disorder.
Islam
sets very specific and clear-cut conditions to prove adultery.
The
person accused of adultery makes a confession and does not go back on
it. Once the person retracts his/her confession, he/she is not
punishable because there is no proof of the act.
Four
reliable and pious men testify that they witnessed the act and
actually saw the male sexual organ inserted into the vagina.
A
woman without a husband found to be pregnant.
Scholars
agreed on the first two methods of proving adultery, but disputed the
third one; some scholars rejected the third point as proof.
It
should also be clear that the punishment should be prevented as much
as possible.
A’isha
narrated that the Prophet (pbuh) said: ‘Ward off punishment as much
as you can. If you find any way out for a Muslim then set him free. If
the Imam makes a mistake in granting forgiveness, it is better for him
than that he should commit a mistake in imposing punishment.’
Thus,
any doubt about the evidence should prevent the punishment.
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