Abu Dawud 4396 records one of the most narratively detailed stoning hadith in the Sunni canon. The case: a Jewish man and woman of Medina had committed fornication. They were brought before Muhammad for judgment. Muhammad asked what punishment their own scripture (the Torah) prescribed. They claimed it was face-blackening and public parading. ʿAbdullah ibn Salam — a Jewish convert to Islam who had memorised the Torah — accused them of hiding the actual penalty (stoning, in Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22). When the Torah was brought, the Jewish reader was caught covering the stoning verse with his hand; when he lifted his hand, the verse was revealed.
Muhammad then ordered the Jewish couple stoned to death. ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar witnessed the execution and recorded the detail that the man tried to shield the woman from the stones with his body.
The hadith is sahih in Abu Dawud, with parallels in Bukhari (3635, 6841) and Muslim (1699). Cross-collection consistency is high.
The theological problems:
1. Application of stoning to non-Muslims. Muhammad applied a hadd (fixed Quranic-derived punishment) to non-Muslims, citing their own scripture as warrant. This is unusual — typically, hadd applies to Muslims under Islamic law. The justification was that the Jewish couple should be punished according to their own (claimed) scriptural standard.
2. The 'hidden Torah verse' narrative. The hadith depicts the Jewish reader hiding the stoning verse — implying that mainstream Jewish practice was concealing the true Torah teaching. This is theologically polemical: it casts Jews as scripture-distorters who needed to be exposed by a Muslim convert. The narrative serves the broader Islamic doctrine of tahrif (Jewish corruption of scripture) — although here the 'corruption' is characterised as concealment rather than textual change.
3. The actual Torah text. Leviticus 20:10 prescribes death (without specifying stoning) for adultery. Deuteronomy 22:23-24 prescribes stoning for a betrothed virgin and her seducer. By the 7th century CE, rabbinic Judaism had largely abandoned execution for sexual offences — the Sanhedrin lacked authority to impose capital punishment under Roman and later Sasanian rule, and rabbinic interpretation had introduced extensive procedural protections (four witnesses, prior warning, etc.) that made conviction nearly impossible. The hadith's depiction of Jewish 'priests' inventing face-blackening is partly accurate (rabbinic punishments by then did include shaming) but mischaracterises the rabbinic theological framework.
4. The stoning of the Jewish couple as Islamic precedent. The hadith establishes that stoning is the appropriate punishment for adulterers — and applies it across religious lines. This precedent supports the broader Islamic stoning rulings (treated under entries q05, b03, b12, etc.) and connects the Islamic punishment to its claimed Torah-based authority.
5. The 'man protecting the woman' detail. ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar's eyewitness detail — the man trying to shield the woman from stones — is one of the most affecting details in the hadith. It humanises the victims, which the canonical preservation does not minimise. This raises the moral question: a man trying to protect a woman from stoning is a recognisable image of love and care, even in the moment of execution. The hadith preserves both the cruelty and the human response to it.
6. Modern application. Contemporary stoning executions (Iran, Saudi Arabia, parts of Nigeria, Afghanistan under Taliban rule) cite the Quranic-hadith framework, of which Abu Dawud 4396 is a foundational text. The stoning of women — and occasionally men — for fornication, often in cases involving rape victims who could not produce four male witnesses, has continued under Islamic legal frameworks into the 21st century.
- P1. Abu Dawud 4396 records Muhammad ordering the stoning of a Jewish couple for fornication, citing the Torah's stoning provision as warrant.
- P2. The hadith depicts the Jewish reader hiding the stoning verse, with a Muslim convert exposing the deception.
- P3. The hadith is sahih in Abu Dawud, Bukhari, and Muslim — cross-collection consistency is high.
- P4. The stoning was carried out by the Muslim community, with ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar participating and recording the detail of the man trying to shield the woman.
- P5. The hadith establishes stoning as the appropriate punishment for adulterers and applies it across religious lines.
- P6. The narrative serves the broader Islamic doctrine of tahrif (Jewish corruption of scripture), characterising Jewish religious leaders as concealing true scriptural law.
- P7. Modern stoning executions in Islamic jurisdictions cite this and parallel hadith as foundational warrant; the punishment continues to be applied in the 21st century.
Abu Dawud 4396 is the canonical narrative establishing stoning as cross-confessional punishment for adultery, with the additional theological claim that Jewish religious authorities were concealing the true Torah text. The hadith combines a graphic execution scene with anti-Jewish polemic and a foundational legal precedent. Modern Muslim apologetic responses face the difficulty that the hadith plainly authorises stoning, plainly applies it to non-Muslims, and plainly establishes the practice as Islamic doctrine. The text is what we would expect of 7th-century tribal-religious legal application, and exactly what we would not expect of a divine teaching about justice and proportional punishment.
The stoning was applied because the Jewish couple were judged by their own law — Muhammad applied to them what their Torah prescribed.
Even on this framing, the Quran's claim that the previous scriptures were corrupt (the standard Islamic dilemma — see q01) creates a problem: if the Torah was corrupt, why was a corrupt scripture used to justify execution? The 'apply their own law' framing requires that the Torah's stoning provision was authentic — but Islam typically holds the broader Torah to be corrupted. The selective acceptance is internally inconsistent.
The hadith confirms that the Torah's stoning verse was present in the 7th-century Torah — supporting the Islamic claim that Jews subsequently corrupted their scripture by removing it.
The Torah's stoning verses (Lev 20:10, Deut 22:22-24) are still present in the Hebrew Bible today, in all manuscripts and translations. The hadith therefore does not establish corruption-by-removal. The 'concealment by hand' narrative was about a single Torah scroll being read in Muhammad's presence, not about systematic textual change. The corruption argument fails on the textual evidence.
Stoning was the punishment Allah had ordained for adultery — Q 24:2 was revealed later prescribing 100 lashes, partially abrogating the stoning rule.
Sunni jurisprudence has held that stoning applies to married adulterers (per the lost stoning verse, b03) while lashing applies to unmarried fornicators (per Q 24:2). This produces a stable application of stoning that has continued into modern times. The 'partial abrogation' framing does not eliminate stoning; it allocates it to a specific category. The category continues to be punished by stoning today.
The man's attempt to shield the woman shows the human dimension of the case, but the punishment was just — the law was applied correctly.
The 'human dimension' detail is preserved in the canonical record because it is morally significant. A man trying to protect a woman from stoning death is recognising the moral horror of the punishment. The fact that the canonical record preserves this detail and the Islamic legal tradition still proceeded with the stoning shows the moral disconnection of the legal framework from human moral instinct. The detail is not merely incidental; it is testimony to the cruelty of the act.
Modern stoning executions are rare and increasingly contested within Muslim-majority countries — the practice is in decline.
Modern decline is moral progress despite the texts, not because of them. Stoning was carried out in Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia within the past two decades. ISIS revived public stoning in Syria and Iraq in 2014-2017. The Taliban applied stoning in Afghanistan in the 1990s and again after 2021. The 'decline' is uneven and contested. The textual basis remains active, awaiting political conditions for reapplication.