a pregnancy when she has neither a husband nor a master and does not allege any circumstance that would render the matter doubtful: is she to be stoned?

The position of Mālik and others among the scholars of Medina and the early Muslims is that she is to be stoned. This is also one of the two positions reported from Ahmad. The position of Abū Hanīfa and al-Shāfiī is that she is not to be stoned, and this is the second position reported from Ahmad. They said that she may have been compelled to have intercourse, intercourse may have taken place under a mistaken semblance of legality, or she may have conceived without intercourse.

The first position is the one established from the Rightly Guided Caliphs. It is authentically reported in the two Sahih collections that Umar ibn al-Khattāb addressed the people toward the end of his life and said:

“Stoning is prescribed in the Book of Allah for men and women who commit illicit sexual intercourse when proof is established, pregnancy occurs, or there is a confession (1).”

Thus, pregnancy was deemed evidence establishing illicit sexual intercourse, just like witness testimony. The same (2) applies to this case. Likewise, they differed over whether a drinker is to receive the prescribed punishment if he vomits or the odor of alcohol is detected on him; there are two positions on this matter. What is known from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and his (3) Rightly Guided Caliphs is that they used to impose the prescribed punishment on the basis of the odor or vomit (4). If a witness testified that a person had vomited the intoxicant, it was equivalent to testifying that he had drunk it. Such remote possibilities are like the possibility that the witnesses were mistaken or lied, or that he erred in