Allah describes those who practice liwat as committing an abomination that no one else in the worlds had ever perpetrated before them. They are societal deviants, branded in revelation as transgressors, prodigals, and criminals. Because of the ugliness of their crime, He punished them with a retribution He had not sent upon any other people: the earth was made to swallow them, and a rain of stones fashioned from baked clay was hurled down upon them.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ cursed both the one who performs the act and the one upon whom it is performed.

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah said: “The sound opinion held by the Companions is that both parties are to be executed—the upper and the lower, whether they have previously been married or not.” He added: “The Companions did not disagree about killing the sodomite. Some of them maintained that he should be taken to the highest wall in the village, thrown from it, and then pelted with stones.”

Al-Muwaffaq (Ibn Qudāmah) stated: “Killing the sodomite rests on the unanimous agreement of the Companions; they concurred on the execution itself and differed only over the manner of carrying it out.”

Ibn Rajab said: “The correct ruling is that he is to be killed, whether previously married or unmarried, in view of Allah’s words: ‘We rained upon them stones of hardened clay.’ According to the narration from Aḥmad, ‘his prescribed penalty is stoning, whether he is a bachelor or previously married.’ This is also the position of Mālik and others, and one of the two reports from al-Shāfiʿī, for the Prophet ﷺ said: ‘Whoever you find committing the deed of the people of Lot…’”}