The Islamic State group in Syria (IS) released Tuesday a video in which they stoned a married woman to death over allegedly committing adultery in Hama.
A militant in the video said that the stoning is the first incident took place in this area, justifying his deed as a “lesson” for other people who would commit infidelity.
“The punishment is a result of the deed you committed and no-one forced you to do it, so you have to be content with God’s rule and be submitted to God. Are you content with God’s punishment?” said the bearded militant who was with a shirt and army fabric trouser.
The video showed the women from the back as she nodded her head that was veiled by a scarf.
The woman’s father who was with the militants refused to forgive his daughter after she asked him, saying “my heart disobeys to forgive you”, but after the militants asked him to forgive her, he nodded his head saying “I forgave you.”
The bearded militant asked the women to give a piece of advice to the people; she said “I advise every woman to protect her honor more than herself.”
“To all men and all married Muslim youth, this is a message from a married Muslim woman, who was pushed by some of men’s mistakes to such a deed,” the bearded man said, adding “you leave your wives for one, two or three years alone, what would happen to them; the Satan lured them.”
The women’s father bound his daughter with rope and pulled her to a hole and started along with other militants to stone her. The video did not reveal any confession by the woman, nor show her dead body.
The video makes also no reference to the punishment or identity of the alleged partner with whom the woman is accused of committing adultery.
“Applying this punishment is very bad; there is no mercy. And the Quran says the punishment should be lashing, not stoning,” said the former academic professor of Humanities Studies faculty of al-Azhar University Amena Nosseir in remarks to The Cairo Post Tuesday.
The prescribed punishment of lashing for extra-marital sexual relations comes from a single verse in the Quran, the second verse of chapter 24, Al-Noor, and there is no other mention of stoning.
“There is a campaign to damage the image of Islam,” she said, adding that under Islamic law a person would have to confess, or there would have to be four male witnesses to the actual act of adultery who testify four times.
The carrying out of punishment, as well, is conditioned upon a confession or witnesses, and according to a hadith (a saying of the Prophet Muhammad,) punishment must be averted if there is any doubt of guilt.
The former Azhar University professor Ahmed Kereima told The Cairo Post Tuesday that what IS is doing has no link to Islam and there “not many” Islamic countries that practice stoning.
Amnesty International has flagged cases of stoning in Iran as well as in Afghanistan a number of times in the past few years, and has urged their penal codes to remove capital punishment.
