ʿUyayna, concerning “the case of the hired servant: ‘Go in the morning to this man’s wife; if she confesses, stone her.’ She confessed, and he stoned her.” These two instances of applying the prescribed punishment thus preclude combining flogging with stoning, dispensing with stoning while retaining flogging, and dispensing with banishment alongside flogging for an unmarried offender, in accordance with what the Sunnah has firmly established.

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There is no disagreement about this among the jurists of the various regions. Only certain proponents of literalism who departed from the general position relied on the hadith of ʿUbāda to require flogging alongside stoning for a married adulterer. Further support for the abrogation of ʿUbāda’s hadith by the hadith of Abū Hurayra and his two companions is that Abū Hurayra embraced Islam late, in the seventh year after the Hijra, following the conquest of Khaybar; the same applies to his two companions. By contrast, ʿUbāda ibn al-Sāmit was one of the twelve representatives on the night of al-ʿAqaba. His report therefore dates from the revelation of the verse in Sūrat al-Nūr, whereas the case of the hired servant occurred years later.

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As for the words of Allah, Mighty and Majestic:

“Once they are married, if they commit an indecency, they shall receive half the punishment prescribed for free women” [al-Nisāʾ: 25].

The word has been read as both uhsinna and ahsanna. According to the reading uhsinna, transmitted by the people of Medina, it means “they have married.” Ismāʿīl al-Qādī and Ibn Bukayr adopted this interpretation: ihsān in this verse means marriage. Their evidence was that these women had already been described as believers in His words:

“From among your believing slave women” [al-Nisāʾ: 25].

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According to this interpretation, the verse explains that marriage while enslaved does not confer full marital status and entails neither stoning nor one hundred lashes. Nor does it indicate that, if she has not married