Present day Hudud and Mary in the Quran: One BIG Question
According to present day Hudud laws as proposed by PAS,
1. Zina is punishable upon conviction by stoning to death for a married person.
2. Whipping of 100 lashes plus one year imprisonment for the unmarried.
3. Four eye-witnesses will be required to prove the act. Each witness must be an adult (akil baligh) Muslim male of just character.
4. Pregnancy on the part of an unmarried woman or when she delivers a child shall be evidence of zina of which would make her liable to the prescribed punishment unless she can proof the contrary – i.e. to bring 4 male Muslim witnesses of just character if she was raped.
Traditional Islam interprets Quranic verses about Mary, mother of Jesus as a woman who had a virgin birth (refer for example Quran 19:20 -22, 66:12). When Mary brought baby Jesus to the temple, she was insulted and mocked by all the men (except Zechariah) questioning how she came to be with a child as she was still single. According to the Quran, Jesus began to speak in the cradle to defend her mother (Refer Quran 19: 27-33)
The question.
How would modern day Hudud deal with Mary (the most exalted woman in the Quran, Quran 3:42) as she could not show 4 akil baligh male Muslim witnesses of just character?
Note: as an infant, Jesus was not akil baligh.
Peace,
Anas Zubedy
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Hudud is the current raging debate in Malaysia. It even overshadows the MAS MH370 mystery and the possible outbreak of WWIII due to developments in the Crimea. Nevertheless, my opinion is that the debate on Hudud is all over the place and is not focused on the core issue of what Hudud is all about.
Hudud is just one of the many branches of Islamic laws and it only deals with seven crimes. Hudud is not the entire Islamic law. It is just a portion of the many Islamic laws. And Hudud is not just about cutting off the hands of thieves and robbers, as many seem to think.
The Islamic laws, also known as Sharia laws, already exist in Malaysia. And it has existed long before Merdeka. In fact, Malaysia even has Sharia courts to decide on these laws. So, Sharia laws are not something that is new to Malaysia. The only thing is the Sharia laws are not, according to some Muslims, complete. While many may already be covered, some are still not. And the Hudud branch of these Sharia laws is one of those not yet covered.
Hence the debate on Hudud is not about introducing Islamic laws to Malaysia. Islamic laws already exist in Malaysia. It is about making these laws complete because they are not yet complete since Hudud is still not part of those laws.
While most debaters are focused on the part regarding cutting off the hands of thieves and robbers, Anas has raised the matter of stoning to death for adulteresses in his short piece above. While everyone is arguing about the cutting off the hands of thieves and robbers, no one appears concerned about this other matter where women who cheat on their husbands can get stoned to death under the Islamic Sharia law of Hudud.
Most Muslims believe that Hudud, in particular the law on stoning adulteress women to death, was a law that was introduced by Prophet Muhammad. Actually it was not. This law was introduced by Umar ibn Al-Khattāb, the Second Caliph who took over after the death of Abu Bakar As-Ṣiddīq. Hence it was Umar and not Prophet Muhammad who made this into law.
Umar was actually a very strict disciplinarian and was most feared for his temper and harsh treatment of women and ‘deviants’. He even punished those he caught writing what today we refer to as Hadith or sayings of the Prophet. Hence during Umar’s time no Hadith were allowed unless you want to get whipped and kicked. It is therefore no wonder that the Hadith were written more than 150-250 years after the time of Umar.
Before the time of Umar, women could pray side-by-side with the men and even joined the men to go to war. Islamic history reports that Prophet Muhammad’s first wife, Khatijah, was a successful and prosperous businesswoman. And it was she who proposed marriage to Prophet Muhammad and not the other way around. Hence women were more liberated in that society more than 1,000 years before western women understood the meaning of women’s liberation.
That, however, changed when Umar took over as Caliph. Umar tried to confine women to their homes and forbade them from joining the men in prayer in the mosques. He also enforced segregation between men and women and introduced harsh laws against women.
One of these harsh laws was the stoning to death of adulteresses. There is no verse in the Qur’an supporting this law but Umar agued that this law was actually part of the revelation but was somehow excluded when the text of the Qur’an was formalised after the death of Prophet Muhammad. Umar, however, did not explain how this law was accidentally excluded from the Qur’an.
Since then various Hadith were created, almost 200 to almost 300 years after the death of the Prophet, to support the argument that it was Prophet Muhammad who introduced the law of stoning to death for adulteresses. This is not true. It was not Prophet Muhammad but Umar who did this.
This is something most Muslims would not want to admit. In fact, most Muslims do not even know where the Hudud law of stoning adulteresses to death came from. They believe that this law came from God through Prophet Muhammad because most Muslims put the Hadith above the Qur’an. And when they argue their case they would quote the Hadith and not the Qur’an. And if you dispute this they would label you as anti-Hadith and therefore an apostate or heretic. And people like Kassim Ahmad have been arrested and charged for the so-called crime of disputing and/or rejecting the Hadith.
Hence very few Muslims would dare dispute or question the Hadith, in particular those concerning the Hudud law of stoning to death for adulteresses unless, like me, you live in the UK and are out of the reach of the Malaysian religious authorities.
(Now do you know why it is impossible for me to return to Malaysia even if Rosmah Mansor forgives me for that Statutory Declaration which I signed in June 2008? They will pick me up at the airport for crimes against Islam or for deviationist teachings.)
So, if it was not God through Prophet Muhammad who introduced the law of stoning to death for adulteresses and if this law is one of the laws of Hudud, did Hudud come from God through Prophet Muhammad or was Hudud a later invention of male Muslims who wanted to dominate female Muslims?
We must remember that all religions are patriarchal and not matriarchal. Hence religions always favour men and are unfavourable towards women. Before the time of Muhammad, women could marry more than one husband (and women like Khatijah could propose marriage). Later on women got stoned to death for marrying more than one husband while men can marry more than one wife and became the property of the husband.
I suggest non-Muslim readers refrain from posting comments to allow the Muslim readers to whack me and call me all sorts of names and suggest that I go and learn more regarding Islam before I attempt any articles on Islam.