So they went to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while he was sitting in the mosque among his Companions and said, “Abū al-Qāsim, what do you rule concerning a man from among us who has committed adultery after having been married?”
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ rose without answering them, and some Muslims rose with him until they reached the Jews’ study-house, where they found them reading the Torah. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
“O assembly of Jews, I adjure you by Allah who sent down the Torah to Moses: what do you find in the Torah as the punishment for one who commits adultery after having been married?”
They replied, “We disgrace them by mounting the pair on a donkey, back-to-back.”
Their rabbi, a young man, remained silent. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ noticed his silence he pressed him with the same adjuration. The rabbi then said, “Now that you have adjured us, we do indeed find in the Torah the ruling of stoning for the married adulterer.”
The Prophet ﷺ asked, “What was the first occasion on which you relaxed Allah’s command?”
He answered, “A man of our lineage committed adultery with a woman related to one of our kings, so the king delayed her stoning. Later another man from the common people committed adultery and the king wanted to stone him, but his people stood up for him, saying, ‘By Allah, we will not stone him until you stone so-and-so, his cousin.’ They therefore agreed among themselves on this new punishment.”
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “I judge according to what is decreed in the Torah,” and he ordered that the two offenders be stoned; so they were stoned.
Al-Zuhrī said: We have been informed that the following verses were revealed about them: “Indeed We sent down the Torah, wherein is guidance and light; by it the prophets who had submitted themselves judged for the Jews” (al-Māʾidah 5:44).
This incident is corroborated in an authentic ḥadīth narrated by Ibn ʿUmar.
I (the author) say: We have already quoted the relevant reports when discussing Allah’s words: “O Messenger, let not those who race one another into disbelief grieve you—those who say ‘We believe’ with their mouths while their hearts do not believe, and of those who are Jews, avid listeners to lies, listening for the sake of other people who have never come to you, altering the words from their proper places. They say, ‘If you are given this, accept it’” (al-Māʾidah 5:41). The phrase refers to the flogging and face-blackening they had agreed upon and invented for themselves, meaning: “If Muḥammad rules for you with this, accept it; and if you are not given it, then beware.” Allah, Exalted is He, says: “Whomever Allah intends to test, you have no power to protect him from Allah. These are the ones whose hearts Allah does not wish to purify; for them is disgrace in this world, and in the Hereafter a tremendous punishment” (al-Māʾidah 5:41). He then says: “How is it that they seek you as judge when they have the Torah, containing Allah’s judgment, and then turn away after that? Such people are not believers” (al-Māʾidah 5:43).
Thus Allah censured them for their ill intent and for what they believed about their own Scripture: they knew it contained Allah’s ruling of stoning, yet they abandoned it for their self-devised practices of face-blackening and the humiliating parade.
This ḥadīth was also transmitted by Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq from al-Zuhrī, who said: I heard a man from Muzaynah relate to Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib that Abū Hurayrah narrated it to them, and in his version the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said to Ibn Ṣūriyā, “I adjure you by Allah ….”