21. Al-Anbiya, Mecca, Qui or Qala

The Quranic Text & Ali’s Version:

وَالَّذِينَ يَرْمُونَ الْمُحْصَنَاتِ ثُمَّ لَمْ يَأْتُوا بِأَرْبَعَةِ شُهَدَاء...

21: 4. And those who launch a charge against chaste women, and produce not four witnesses, (to support their allegation) --

...فَاجْلِدُوهُمْ ثَمَانِينَ جَلْدَةً وَلَا تَقْبَلُوا لَهُمْ شَهَادَةً أَبَدًا...

flog them with eighty stripes: and reject their evidence ever after:

C2958. The most serious notice is taken of people who put forward slanders or scandalous suggestions about women without adequate evidence.

If anything is said against a woman's chastity, it should be supported by evidence twice as strong as would ordinarily be required for business transactions, or even in murder cases. That is, four witnesses would be required instead of two. Failing such preponderating evidence, the slanderer should himself be treated as a wicked transgressor and punished with eighty stripes. Not only would he be subjected to this disgraceful form of punishment, but he would be deprived of the citizen's right of giving evidence in all matters unless he repents and reforms, in which case he can be readmitted to be a competent witness.

The verse lays down the punishment for slandering "chaste women", which by consensus of opinion also covers slandering chaste men.

Chaste women have been specifically mentioned, according to Commentators, because slandering them is more abhorrent. (Eds).

...وَأُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْفَاسِقُونَ ﴿٤﴾

for such men are wicked transgressors --

Other versions:

Say: 5 "My Sustainer knows whatever is spoken in heaven and on earth; and He alone is all- hearing, all-knowing."

[[ Asad’s notes -

1 Lit., "and yet in [their] heedlessness they are obstinate (mu'ridun)".

2 Lit., "while they are playing".

3 See next note.

4 As regards my occasional rendering of sihr (lit., "sorcery" or "magic") as "spellbinding eloquence", see 74:24, where this term occurs for the first time in the chronology of Qur'anic revelation. By rejecting the message of the Qur'an on the specious plea that Muhammad is but a human being endowed with "spellbinding eloquence", the opponents of the Qur'anic doctrine in reality "conceal their innermost thoughts": for, their rejection is due not so much to any pertinent criticism of this doctrine as, rather, to their instinctive, deep- set unwillingness to submit to the moral and spiritual discipline which an acceptance of the Prophet's call would entail.

5 According to the earliest scholars of Medina and Basrah, as well as some of the scholars of Kufah, this word is spelt qui, as an imperative ("Say"), whereas some of the Meccan scholars and the majority of those of Kufah read it as qala ("He [i.e., the Prophet] said"). In the earliest copies of the Qur'an the spelling was apparently confined, in this instance, to the consonants q-1: hence the possibility of reading it either as qui or as qala. However, as Tabari points out, both these readings have the same meaning and are, therefore, equally valid, "for, when God bade Muhammad to say this, he [undoubtedly] said it... Hence, in whichever way this word is read, the reader is correct (musib as-sawab) in his reading." Among the classical commentators, Baghawi and Baydawi explicitly use the spelling qui, while Zamakhshari's short remark that "it has also been read as qala" seems to indicate his own preference for the imperative qui.]