The jurists—may Allah have mercy on them—define zinā as committing the indecent act through vaginal or anal intercourse.

Ibn Rushd said: “It is every act of sexual relations that occurs outside a valid marriage, any semblance of marriage, or lawful ownership of a bondwoman. On this, the scholars of Islam are generally agreed, even though they have differed as to what qualifies as a doubtful case that would avert the ḥadd.” End quote.

Accordingly, when the perpetrator is muḥṣan—meaning previously married and legally accountable—he is to be stoned with stones until he dies, whether the offender is a man or a woman. This is the position of the scholars from the Companions, the Successors, and those who followed them in every land and age; none opposed it except the Khārijites.

Stoning is further confirmed by the Prophet’s ﷺ Sunnah, both his explicit statements and his enacted practice, transmitted through uninterrupted mass narration.

It was also mentioned in the Noble Quran, though its wording was later abrogated while its ruling remained. The verse read: al-shaykhu wa’l-shaykhatu idhā zanayā farjumūhumā al-batta nakālan min Allāh, wa-Allāhu ʿazīz ḥakīm—“If an elderly man and an elderly woman commit adultery, then stone them outright as a deterrent from Allah; and Allah is Mighty, Wise.”

Thus, with stoning established by a Quranic verse whose wording was abrogated but whose judgment endures, by the mutawātir Sunnah, and by scholarly consensus, the Khārijites—and, in our own times, certain writers who follow the same path—have nonetheless dared to reject it, chasing their whims and casting aside the legal proofs and the consensus of the Muslim community.