In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Beneficent
As for the adulteress and the adulterer, flog each of them with a hundred stripes, and let not compassion for them keep you from (carrying out) this law of God, if you truly believe in God and the Last Day; and let a number of believers witness their punishment.
The adulterer couples with none other than an adulteress or an idolatress; and with the adulteress couples none other than an adulterer or an idolater. This is forbidden to the believers. (Light, Al-Noor: 24: 2-3)
A report that gives the reason for the revelation of the second of these two verses mentions that Marthad, a man from the Ansar, used to go to Makkah to free those who were imprisoned there because of believing in Islam. He would take those whom he managed to free to Madinah. Before becoming a Muslim, he used to have a friend in Makkah called Anaq who was a prostitute. On one of his visits, he arranged to smuggle out one of those held prisoner in Makkah. He said: “I stopped by the outside wall of a garden on a clear night with moonlight. Anaq soon came and noticed a black shade against the wall. When she drew near, she recognized me and mentioned my name. I confirmed that it was I. She welcomed me and invited me to her place to stay the night. I said: ‘Anaq! God has forbidden adultery.’ She gave me away, shouting to the people there that I was smuggling their prisoners. As I tried to disappear, eight of them followed me. I went into the garden and walked until I entered a cave. They followed me in and stood by my head, while I remained motionless. Some of them urinated over my head, but God helped me and they did not notice me. When they left, I returned to my man and helped him. He was very heavy, but I carried him for a distance, and then I untied him. I carried him on, but he helped me until we safely reached Madinah. I then went to the Prophet and asked him if it was all right for me to marry Anaq. I repeated my question twice, but he did not reply until this verse was revealed stating: ‘The adulterer couples with none other than an adulteress or an idolatress; and with the adulteress couples none other than an adulterer or an idolater. This is forbidden to the believers.’ The Prophet said to me: ‘Marthad! An adulterer couples with none other than an adulteress or an idolatress. Do not marry her’.” (Related by Abu Dawood, Al-Nassaie and Al-Tirmidhi)
This verse, then, implies that a believer is forbidden to marry an adulteress unless she genuinely repents. The same applies to a female believer and an adulterer. This is the view Imam Ahmad has taken, but other scholars have a different view. As a point of difference, it may be studied in Fiqh books. At any rate, this type of action alienates the perpetrator from the Muslim community, which in itself is a severe social punishment that is not less painful than flogging.
When enacting such severe punishments for this abominable offence, Islam does not overlook the natural desire behind it. Islam knows that human beings cannot and should not suppress such a natural desire. Nor does Islam wish that people should fight the physiological functions God has given them as part of their nature and part of the laws of life, ensuring the continuity of mankind. Islam only shuns an animal approach to this desire that treats one body as the same as another, and has no intention of building a home, life partnership and a family. Islam wants the sexual relation between a man and a woman to be based on fine human feelings that involve their hearts and souls in their physical union, so as to make it a union between two human beings sharing their lives, pains, hopes, and future. They expect to have children who are reared by both parents to build that future.
This is the reason for which Islam ordains such a hard punishment for adultery, considering it a setback into animality that destroys all these fine feelings and undermines these goals. Adultery turns human beings into semi-animal creatures that treat all men as males and women as females trying to satisfy a physical desire in a casual relation. Its momentary ecstasy has neither a constructive aim nor a fine, durable love. It is the continuity aspect that distinguishes such a fine feeling from a momentary and casual charge which many people describe as passion when it is in fact a physical desire taking momentarily the guise of fine feelings.
Islam neither suppresses natural feelings, nor considers them dirty. It only regulates, purifies and elevates them above the physical level so that they become central to much psychological and social values. By contrast, adultery, and prostitution in particular, removes from such natural desires all the exquisite feelings, attractions and values that have been refined over the long history of human life. It leaves it naked, dirty and more coarse than in animals. In many animal and bird species, couples live together in a regulated life. They do not have the sort of sexual chaos that adultery spreads in some human communities, particularly where prostitution is rife.
In order to spare man this type of setback, Islam prescribes such a hard punishment for adultery. Needless to say, this offence causes numerous social ills that people often mention when they speak about this crime.
These include false parenthood, undermining family life and causing hatred and grudges. Each one of these social ills justifies a very hard punishment for the offence causing it. But the primary reason for it is preserving the humanity of man, protecting the moral standards that have come to be associated with clean sex, furthering the aims of marital life that is intended to last. It is, in my view, the reason that serves all others.
Arab News Islam 11 July 2003