Ах, брате, ја заборави козата!
The verse of stoning (ar-Rajm) that was eaten up by a goat
No sane person, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, would agree that fornicators and adulterers deserve the same punishment. In the West today, fornicators are not even deemed offenders of any sort; instead, consensual sexual indulgence between unmarried adult couples are seen as normal and even desirable, and it is deemed as their human rights. But adulterers are generally condemned or disapproved of. If they are to be punished at all, then adulterers would deserve harsher punishments than the fornicators. And those educated moderate Muslims, who claim that punishment for adultery in Islam is prescribed in verse 24:2, will be the first amongst Muslims to disagree that fornicators and adulterers should be given the same punishment. Yet, that's what verse 24:2 apparently recommends.
So the question arises:
- Could Allah be so glaringly stupid to prescribe the same punishment for these two sets of offences – fornication and adultery – that have very different implications?
- Could Allah be more irrational than those educated moderate Muslims as well as infidels of the world, who rightly think that adulterers deserve harsher punishment or disapproval than fornicators?
Those educated moderate Muslims will be the firsts to answer 'no' to these questions.
And they are just right. Allah, in actuality, couldn't and didn't prescribe the same punishment for fornicators and adulterers. According to authentic Islamic sources, Allah had sanctioned different punishment for adulterers in a separate verse, called verse of ar-Rajm (stoning), but it was somehow lost before the Quran was compiled under Caliph Abu Bakr.
According to authentic hadith compiler Ibn Majah, Allah had revealed a verse on stoning adulterers to death, which the Prophet had kept under his child-wife Aisha's care, but due to her carelessness, it was eaten up by a goat. Here's the hadith:
Sunan Ibn Majah, Hadith 1944:
Reported Aisha (RA): '
the verse of stoning and of suckling an adult ten times was revealed, and they were (written) on a paper and kept under my pillow. When the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) expired and we were occupied by his death, a goat entered and ate away the paper.' (عن عائشة قالت لقد نزلت آية الرجم ورضاعة الكبير عشرا ولقد كان في صحيفة تحت سريري فلما مات رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم وتشاغلنا بموته دخل داجن فأكلها)
Prophet Muhammad's first original biographer Ibn Ishaq also mentions about the same verse (
The Life of Muhammad, Karachi, p. 684):
"God sent Muhammad, and sent down the scripture to him. Part of what
he sent down was the passage on stoning. Umar says, "We read it, we were taught it, and we heeded it. The apostle Muhammad stoned, and we stoned after him."
Stoning to Death for Adultery in Islam: The Missing Stoning Verse of the Quran Eaten up by a Goat