paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Craig Paul) (08/01/90)
I don't believe you will find any reference to the Prophet prescibing stoning for Muslims. You will, however, find some ahadith in which Jews came to him and ask him what to do with some Jewish adulterers. He asked them what the Torah prescribed. One brought the Torah and started to read to the Prophet, but covered up the prescription for stoning. This concealment was brought to the Prophet's attention and he asked that the hidden prescription be read. It prescribed stoning. He recommended that the adulterous Jews be stoned, according to their own holy book. (See both Sahih al Bukhari and Sahih Muslim for these ahadith.) Somehow "fiqh" synthesized that "the Prophet stoned and so will we". Some claimed that a particular Surah in the Qur'an was actually much longer than the version which had been written, and that the "stoning verse" had been contained in the unwritten verses. However, that Surah was revealed (according to the order of Surah/verse revelation in the Cairo recension of the Qur'an) before the order to "confine adulterous women in their homes until God finds a way". If someone can find a particular author who can pinpoint, Chapter and Verse, in the ahadith of Bukhari and/or Muslim about stoning being prescribed for Muslims I'd appreciate hearing about it!
zama@midway.uchicago.edu (iftikhar uz zaman) (08/06/90)
>I don't believe you will find any reference to the Prophet prescibing >stoning for Muslims. >If someone can find a particular author who can pinpoint, Chapter and >Verse, in the ahadith of Bukhari and/or Muslim about stoning being >prescribed for Muslims I'd appreciate hearing about it! Please look in the place one would normally look in when looking for hadiths on "hudud": Kitab al-Hudud. Both Bukhari and Muslim, and just about any other hadith book you open, will have mention of the hadith of the stoning of Ma'iz al-Aslami, that of the "Ghamidi woman" (al-ghadmidiyya), that of the woman from the Juhayna tribe ("al-juhaniyya"). I think there is one more instance which involve Anas b. Malik being sent as a messenger... (hadith starts: ughdu ya unays, ila imra'ati hadha...). In any case, the first three hadiths ARE in both Bukhari and Muslim. By the way, this requirement that a hadith be "in Bukhari or Muslim" is a very uncritical one. To judge the authenticity of a hadith it is the isnad that counts. And, yes, it does take a little (<-understatement) training to gain the ability to weigh an isnad. Nevertheless, one can hobble along using crutches of classical scholarship until one's own feet are strong enough to walk on: look in Fath al-Bari or in Talkhis al-Habir of Ibn Hajar, or in Nasb al-Ra'ya of Zayla'i in the sections on Hudud and you will find tons of hadiths. Now, it often happens that you will find a hadith reference in one of these classical collections which is being related on an isnad which is identical to one in Bukhari or Muslim, and which contains no additional problems--it just so happens that neither Bukhari nor Muslim chose to include it in their books. This is no reason for not accepting these hadiths. Muslim explicitly states: "Ma kullu sahihin katabtuhu fi kitabi hadha" ("I have not recorded every authentic hadith in this book, I have only collected what 'they' have agreed upon"). Now the "they" is vague and is interpreted variously, but this much is clear: that a hadith is not in Muslim does not mean it is not Sahih. [I have quoted from memory, I might be off in a word or two...] In fact, Muslim's teacher, Abu Zur'ah, was dismayed when he saw Muslim's book! He said that now people will say that if it is not in Muslim's Sahih then it is not Sahih (authentic)...[This incident is recorded in, if memory serves me, in Shurut al-a'imma al-khamsa by al-Hazimi...] Wassalam.