He confessed, so the Prophet ﷺ ordered that his head be crushed between two stones. They placed his head on one stone and struck it with another until he died, for this was qiṣāṣ (retaliatory retribution), and Allah says: “Whoever transgresses against you, transgress against him in the same manner that he transgressed against you” (Q 2:194).

However, if a person deserves death under the ruling of ḥirābah—meaning he waylays travelers, seizes their wealth, and murders them—he is to be put to death by the sword, unless he had mutilated his victim; in that case he is mutilated in the very way he mutilated others. What he did to others is done to him.

Someone may ask, “When a married man commits adultery he is stoned with small stones until he dies. Those pebbles hurt and torment him before death—does this not clash with the Prophet’s instruction to make the killing swift and kind?”

The answer is no; there is no contradiction. The hadith can be understood in one of two ways:

1. ‘Perfecting the manner of killing’ may simply mean ‘to carry it out exactly as the Law prescribes.’ In that sense, stoning is the most proper and compassionate way, because it is what the Law itself commands.
2. Or we may say that stoning is an explicit exception established by the Sunnah—and by a Qur’anic verse whose wording was abrogated while its ruling remained—then confirmed by clear prophetic practice.

Accordingly, when a married adulterer—one who has consummated marriage—commits fornication, God forbid, he is brought forward and small stones are taken, each smaller than an egg, roughly the size of a date or a little larger. He is struck and stoned until he dies. The vital spots are avoided; he is not struck where death would come swiftly. Rather, stones are cast upon his back, abdomen, and similar areas until his soul departs. This is the divinely mandated ruling.

And the wisdom behind this is that the very body which tasted the forbidden pleasure was