Iqbal Latif

"He that is without sin, let him first cast a stone at her.''

You say you want to ban executions by stoning. Does that mean that other forms of execution are acceptable.

Stoning to death is the most pitiless, unkind, inhuman and brutal type of capital punishment.

This is part of the Holy scripture and as King Dave has highlighted widely supported by the rank and file, the purpose of Amnesty is to get the issue in the fore and knock it out of the Iran penal code.

Now if you had said let's ban executions worldwide you might have had something. But you are very specific.

This is not a debate about the preference of one form of death over other. It is a debate about change of god ordained law that has enormous reception, pain in death is a type of spite and malice that is more animalistic than man. Those putting it in the front for changing the article deserve our support.

It is a duty of everyone to lodge strong protests and make every effort to see that this fundamentally flawed sentencing of 'Stoning to Death' is banned and made illegal within the Islamic world.

Iran legislature is contemplating to visit this issue.

So they'll switch to hanging. You OK with that?

No- Killing of a man is inhuman in any shape or form. It is sad to see that sophisticated societies still engage in such an old-fashioned and antiquate practice, brooding of a outlook that is very medieval and primitive.

History:

Stoning was clearly mentioned in the Jewish Bible, as a punishment for idolatry, blasphemy,child sacrifice, divination, Sabbathviolation, adultry, fornication by an ummarried woman, and the rebellion of children. Early Christianity, particularly in the Mishnah, doubts were growing in Jewish society about the morality of capital punishment in general and stoning in particular. The Mishnah states:

Philosopher Moses Maimonides wrote "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" is not speaking to judging. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye.

In John 8:1 - 11 scribes and Pharisees had caught a woman in the act of adultery (the woman commonly referred to as the prostitute) and told Jesus who was teaching in the temple that the Mosaic Law required she be stoned to death. Trying to make an opportunity of this to trick Jesus that they might accuse Him, they, with stones in hand, asked Jesus what He says about the Law. After Jesus tried to ignore their repeated questioning, He told them "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." One by one each man dropped his stone and walked away.

The Qur'an forbids all sexual intercourse outside the marital bond as sinful, but makes no distinction between adultery and fornication and in both cases the punishment is flogging100 times for those found guilty. Stoning (rajm) as a punishment for adultery is not mentioned in the Koran, so some modernist Muslim scholars like Quran alone Muslim Scholars take the view that stoning to death is not an Islamic law.

According to the Hanbali jurist Ibn Qudamah, "Muslim jurists are unanimous on the fact that stoning to death is a specified punishment for the married adulterer and adulteress. The punishment is recorded in number of traditions and the practice of Muhammad stands as an authentic source supporting it. This is the view held by all Companions, Successors and other Muslim scholars.

Iran:

Under Iran's Islamic law, stoning to death is the punishment for the crime of adultery.

In 2002 Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi imposed a moratorium on stoning, but at least three people are reported to have been executed by stoning since then. Human rights group Amnesty International earlier this year called on Iran to abolish "this grotesque punishment" and said many facing execution by stoning were sentenced after unfair trials. Under Iran's strict penal code, men convicted of adultery should be buried up to their waists and women up to their chests for stoning. The stones used should not be large enough to kill the person immediately.

Ayatollah Sadegh Ardeshir Amoli Larijani is the current head of the judicial system of Iran. According to leading Iranian human rights defense lawyer Mohammad Seifzadeh, the head of the Judicial System of Iran is required to be a Mojtahed with significant experience in the field. Larijani, however, was neither an experienced jurist nor a highly ranked cleric and carried the title of "Hojjat-ol Eslam" up to a few months before his appointment to the post. Sadegh Larijani has stated that the government does not derive its legitimacy from the votes of the nation.

Larijani proclaims:

"We support a society which is based on the spirit of Islam and religious faith, in which Islamic and religious values are propagated, in which every Koranic injunction and the teachings of the Prophet of Islam and theImams are implemented. It will be a society in which the feeling of servitude to God Almighty will be manifest everywhere, and in which people will not demand their rights from God but are conscious of their obligations to God." Islamic Sharia Law is based on the Qur'an, the hadith, and the biography of Mohammed. Shiaand Sunni hadith collections differ because scholars from the two traditions differ as to the reliability of the narrators and transmitters and the Imamah. Shi'a sayings related to stoning can be found in Kitab al-Kafi, and Sunni sayings related to stoning can be found in the Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

Based on these hadiths, in several Muslim countries, such as Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, adultery is punishable by stoning.

Saudi Arabia:

Now this is allegedly what they think about the punishment:

Sura An-Nur (24): 
All translations are by Abdullah Yusuf Ali

24: 1 A Sura which We have sent down and which We have ordained: In it have We sent down Clear Signs, in order that ye may receive admonition.

24: 2 The woman and the man guilty of adultery or 
fornication, -- flog each of them with a hundred stripes; Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day: And let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.

The opening verse clearly revealed that "if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day" then carry out the penalty PRESCRIBED BY HIM for the sin of adultery or fornication. There is not a single verse within the revealed verses of the Qur'an wherein the penalty of "Stoning to Death" (Penalty of Rajam) is prescribed by Allah, for any crime or sin.

Verse 24: 2:

Zina includes sexual intercourse between a man and a woman not married to each other. It therefore applies both to adultery (which implies that one or both of the parties are married to a person or persons other than the ones concerned) and to fornication, which, in its strict signification, implies that both parties are unmarried. The law of marriage and divorce is made easy in Islam, so that there may be the less temptation for intercourse outside the well-defined incidents of marriage. This makes for greater self-respect for both man and woman. Other sex offences are also punishable, but this Section applies strictly to Zina as above defined. (end of the original commentary).

A DECEPTION: A SUPERFLUOUS TEXT added to the above commentary by The Presidency of Islamic Researches, IFTA, Call and Guidance, Saudi Arabia, in their Revised Editions:

Although zina covers both fornication and adultery, in the opinion of Muslim jurists, the punishment laid down here applies only to unmarried persons. As for married persons, their punishment, according to the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace be on him), is stoning to death.

There is no mention that the above superfluous text as the added text has been added later on by the publishers. A reader who does not have the original edition for comparison would understand in good faith that the text for "stoning to death" was also written by the translator Late Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged! and Let Him Who is Without Sin Cast the First Stone.

I am against death penalty

I am against death penalty including stoning.  What the hell...

Who needs surrealism, when you have IR.