Stoning

These laws hold particular importance for religious conservatives due to their scriptural origin, though in practice they have played a largely symbolic role and tended to fall into disuse.

In recent times, stoning has been a legal or customary punishment in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, northern Nigeria, Afghanistan, Brunei, and tribal parts of Pakistan, including the northwest Kurram Valley and the northwest Khwezai-Baezai region though it is rarely carried out.

Josephus and Eusebius report that Pharisees stoned James, brother of Jesus, after hurling him from the pinnacle of the Temple shortly before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Historians disagree as to whether Roman authorities allowed Jewish communities to apply capital punishment to those who broke religious laws, or whether these episodes represented a form of lynching.

[9] Where medieval Jewish courts had the power to pass and execute death sentences, they continued to do so for particularly grave offenses, although not necessarily the ones defined by the law, and they generally refrained from use of stoning.

[1] Aside from "a few rare and isolated" instances from the pre-modern era and several recent cases, there is no historical record of stoning for zina being legally carried out in the Islamic world.

[11][12] However, the Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought along the emergence of Islamist movements calling for full implementation of sharia, including reinstatement of stoning and other hudud punishments.

[16] In practice, Islamization campaigns have focused on a few highly visible issues associated with the conservative Muslim identity, particularly women's hijab and the hudud criminal punishments (whipping, stoning and amputation) prescribed for certain crimes.

[11] Several countries, including Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, and some Nigerian states have incorporated hudud rules into their criminal justice systems, which, however, retained fundamental influences of earlier Westernizing reforms.

[11][13] In practice, these changes were largely symbolic, and aside from some cases brought to trial to demonstrate that the new rules were being enforced, hudud punishments tended to fall into disuse, sometimes to be revived depending on the local political climate.

[19] The Jewish Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) serves as a common religious reference for Judaism.

In 2023, the Taliban reaffirmed their commitment to administering the death penalty by stoning, focusing in their message especially on the punishment of women for the crime of adultery.

The Afghan legal system depended highly on an individual community's local culture and the political or religious ideology of its leaders.

[24] For example, Book I, Part III, Chapter 5, Article 132 of the new Islamic Penal Code (IPC) of 2013 in the Islamic Republic of Iran states, "If a man and a woman commit zina together more than one time, if the death penalty and flogging or stoning and flogging are imposed, only the death penalty or stoning, whichever is applicable, shall be executed".

[43] Book 2, Part II, Chapter 1, Article 225 of the Iran's IPC released in 2013 states, "the hadd punishment for zina of a man and a woman who meet the conditions of ihsan shall be stoning to death".

They have either been thrown out on appeal, commuted to prison terms or left unenforced, in part as a result of pressure from human rights groups.

[25][48][49][50] Although the Nigerian state has so far not carried out any stonings, the Muslim population in northern Nigeria has taken the enforcement of Sharia law into their own hands through mob killings of alleged blasphemers.

[51] As part of Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization measures, stoning to death (rajm) at a public place was introduced into law via the 1979 Hudood Ordinances as punishment for adultery (zina) and rape (zina-bil-jabr) when committed by a married person.

Another conviction for adultery and sentence of stoning in early 1988 sparked outrage and led to a retrial and acquittal by the Federal Sharia Court.

In this case the trial court took the view that notice of divorce by the defendands former husband should have been given to the Chairman of the local council, as stipulated under Section-7(3) of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961.

In March 2013, a Pakistani soldier stationed in Parachinar, was publicly stoned to death for allegedly having a love affair with a girl from a village in the country's north western Kurram Agency.

[33] On 11 July 2013 a young mother of two, was sentenced by a tribal court in Dera Ghazi Khan District, in Punjab, to be stoned to death for possessing a cell phone.

[55] On 27 May 2014, Farzana Parveen, a 25-year-old married woman who was three months pregnant, was killed by being attacked with batons and bricks by nearly 20 members of her family outside the high court of Lahore in front of "a crowd of onlookers" according to a statement by a police investigator.

[62] In October 2008, a 13-year-old girl, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, reported being gang-raped by three armed men to the local al-Shabaab militia-dominated police force in Kismayo, a city that was controlled Islamist insurgents.

[64] However, numerous witnesses have reported that in actuality Aisha had been visibly confused, crying, begging for mercy, and was physically forced into the hole in which she was buried up to her neck and stoned.

[citation needed] In October 2014, IS released a video appearing to show a Syrian man stone his daughter to death for alleged adultery.

[80] A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013 found varying support in the global Muslim population for stoning as a punishment for adultery (sex between people where at least one person is married; when both participants are unmarried they get 100 lashes).

Groups such as Human Rights Watch,[84] while in sympathy with these protests, have raised a concern that the Western focus on stoning as an especially "exotic" or "barbaric" act distracts from what they view as the larger problems of capital punishment.

In Mauritania,[2] Northern Nigeria,[92] Somalia,[2] Saudi Arabia,[93] Brunei,[94] and Yemen,[2] the legal punishment for sodomy is death by stoning.

Amnesty International said that stoning deals with "acts which should never be criminalized in the first place, including consensual sexual relations between adults, and choosing one's religion".