The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 340
CH. 24 AN-NŪR PT. 18 وَالَّذِينَ يَرْمُونَ الْمُحْصَنَتِ ثُمَّ لَمْ يَأْتُوا And those who calumniate. 5 بِأَرْبَعَةِ شُهَدَاءَ فَاجْلِدُوهُمْ ثَمِنِيْنَ four witnesses-flog them with chaste women but bring not eighty stripes, and never admit their evidence thereafter, and it "24:24. جَلْدَةً وَلَا تَقْبَلُوْا لَهُمْ شَهَادَةً اَبَدًا like him is very low can be persuaded standing for adultery. to marry him. (ii) An adulterer can have sexual relations only with a woman given to adultery. It is impossible for a chaste and believing woman to stoop so low as to yield to the wicked advances of an adulterer. Such a wicked man can only get an adulteress to pander to his carnal passions. An adulteress and idolatress have been bracketed together because of the very low standard of sexual morality obtaining among idol worshippers because they have no revealed Law to guide them. (iii) The adulterer (or fornicator) cannot have sexual relations but with an adulteress (or fornicatoress). This meaning is supported by a saying of the Holy Prophet. He is reported to have said. e. a believer does not commit adultery while he remains a Muslim. The ḥadīth signifies that no true believing man or woman can commit adultery. It is only disbelievers or idolaters who can light-heartedly commit such heinous crimes. The words são cha Ols ou may signify that (i) marriage between a true believer and an adulteress or idolatrous woman and vice versa is forbidden; (ii) the committing of adultery is forbidden to the believers, the pronoun (that) in this case Islam regards adultery as one of the most heinous of all social crimes and looks upon sexual chastity of a man or woman as one of his or her most precious possessions. As the present Surah deals with the subject of establishment of the dominion and kingdom of Islam, it fittingly opens with condemnation of the most deadly of all social crimes which if not checked and suppressed in due time is calculated to bring about total disintegration and destruction of the Muslim community. The Quran seeks to close all those avenues through which this disease finds its way among a people and severely punishes the act of adultery and condemns the guilty parties as social pariahs. While the preceding verse has laid down the punishment which the Quran metes out to adulterers, the verse under comment stigmatizes adulterers and adulteresses as social lepers with whom all social relationship should be avoided. The verse, however, should not be understood to mean that the Quran bars, for all time, to such persons the entrance to respectable Muslim society. It does leave the door of repentance always open. The verse speaks only of persons who are lost to all sense of shame and who habitually 2254