those who regarded it as lawful with a punishment unlike any He inflicted upon other nations: He obliterated their sight, overturned their cities, turning them upside down, and followed this with stones from heaven.

For this reason, Islamic law prescribes that a sexual offence carrying the death penalty be punished by stoning. Thus the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, stoned the two Jews, Māʿiz ibn Mālik al-Aslamī, the Ghāmidī woman, and others. His rightly guided successors also carried out stoning after him. Allah prescribed stoning for the people of the Torah and the Quran. The Sunan collections report that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Whoever you find committing the act of the people of Lot, kill both the one who performs it and the one upon whom it is performed.”

The Companions therefore agreed that both should be put to death, although they differed over the manner of execution. Some said that the offender should be stoned; others said that he should be thrown from the highest wall in the town and then pelted with stones; still others said that he should be burned with fire. Accordingly, the majority of the early generations and jurists held that both should be stoned, whether or not they had previously consummated a marriage, whether they were free or enslaved, or whether one was enslaved to the other. Muslims have agreed that anyone who regards this act as lawful, whether with a slave or anyone else, is an unbeliever and an apostate.

Likewise, the acts leading to this indecency—kissing a beardless youth, touching him, or looking at him for pleasure—are forbidden by Muslim consensus, just as they are with a woman outside the prohibited degrees of marriage. As established in the authentic hadith collection, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“The two eyes