User:1234567/Sandbox 1: Difference between revisions

Muhammad went out to the courtyard and recited the new revelation to the people:<ref>Guillaume/Ishaq 497; {{Bukhari|5|59|462}};.</ref> “Why, when you heard it, did not the believing men and believing women think good of one another and say, ‘This is an obvious falsehood’? Why did [the slanderers] not produce for it four witnesses? And when they do not produce the witnesses, then it is they, in the sight of Allah, who are the liars.”<ref>''Ayat'' 12 & 13 of {{Quran-range|24|4|26}}.</ref> This excused Aisha even had she happened to be guilty, since she only had three and a half witnesses against her.<ref>{{Quran-range|24|11|20}}; {{Bukhari|3|48|829}}; {{Bukhari|5|59|462}}; {{Bukhari|6|60|274}}; {{Bukhari|6|60|281}}; {{Muslim|37|6673}}.</ref> Hamna only counted as a half-witness because she was a woman;<ref>{{Quran|2|282}}. “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her.”</ref> but she still had to take the full punishment. She, Hassan and Mistah were sentenced to 80 lashes each.<ref>Guillaume/Ishaq 497. This was according to {{Quran|24|4}}: “And those who accuse chaste women and then do not produce four witnesses – lash them with 80 lashes.”</ref> The aristocratic Abdullah was not lashed.<ref>His name is conspicuously absent from Ibn Ishaq’s account of the punishment. [http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2439&Itemid=79/ Ibn Kathir, ''Tafsir'' on Q24:14] says: “As for the hypocrites who indulged in the slander, such as Abdullah bin Ubayy bin Salul and his like … the threats that were narrated for a specific deed are bound to be carried out, if there is no repentance or sufficient righteous deeds to balance or outweigh it,” i.e., Abdullah was to be all the more punished in the Hereafter.</ref> Eighty lashes can cause serious injury, or even kill, although Hamna, Hassan and Mistah all survived. While the punishment seems an exaggerated retribution for mere gossip, that gossip had essentially amounted to a plot against Aisha’s life. The real problem lay in the Draconian system that not only killed adulterers but forced women in particular to take an unrealistic level of responsibility for never being suspected.