Zina
Zināʾ (زِنَاء) or zina (زِنًى or زِنًا) is an Islamic law concerning unlawful relations between male and female who are not married to one another through a nikah.[1]
In the four schools of Sunni fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), and the two schools of Shi'a fiqh, the term zināʾ are acts not allowed by Sharia (Islamic law) and classed as a hudud crime (class of Islamic punishments that are fixed for certain crimes that are considered to be "claims of God").[2] To prove an act of zina, a qadi (religious judge) in a sharia court relies on an unmarried woman's pregnancy, the confession in the name of Allah, or four witnesses. The last two types of prosecutions are uncommon. Most cases of zina in the history of Islam have been pregnant unmarried women.[3][4] In some schools of Islamic law, a pregnant woman accused of zina who denies sex was consensual must prove she was raped with four eyewitnesses testifying before the court. This has led to many cases where rape victims have been punished for zina.[5][6] Pressing charges of zina without required eyewitnesses is considered slander (Qadhf, القذف) in Islam, itself a hudud crime.[7][8]
The above sense of zina is not to be confused with the woman's name Zina or Zeina (زينة). The name has a different linguistic root (Greek xen-). It also has a different meaning ("guest, stranger"), is pronounced differently (either Zīnah or Zaynah), and is usually spelled differently.[9]
References
- ↑ R. Peters, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman et al., Brill, ISBN 978-9004161214, see article on Zinā
- ↑ Julie Chadbourne (1999), Never wear your shoes after midnight: Legal trends under the Pakistan Zina Ordinance, Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 17, pp. 179-234
- ↑ Kecia Ali (2006), Sexual Ethics and Islam, ISBN 978-1851684564, Chapter 4
- ↑ M. Tamadonfar (2001), Islam, law, and political control in contemporary Iran, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40(2): 205-220
- ↑ A. Quraishi (1999), Her honour: an Islamic critique of the rape provisions in Pakistan's ordinance on zina, Islamic studies, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 403-431
- ↑ Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 176-183
- ↑ Peters, Rudolph (2006). Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: : Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge University Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0521796705.
- ↑ DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam, 2004: 89-90
- ↑ "Zina meaning and name origin". thinkbabynames.com. Retrieved 16 September 2014.