A3.2 Spreading Accusations of Sexual Misconduct
In Islam, accusing someone of zina requires four upright male witnesses who give their testimony to official Islamic governmental authorities.
“And those who accuse chaste women and then do not produce four witnesses – lash them with eighty lashes and do not accept from them testimony ever after. And those are the defiantly disobedient.” [Quran 24:4]
For a third party to accuse someone of zina without meeting that requirement is called qadhf and it has its own hadd punishment in Sharia, as mentioned in the above ayah. As mentioned earlier in the report, qadhf is one of the major sins.
Allah says in the Quran, Surat an-Nur 12-16:
“Why, when you heard it, did not the believing men and believing women think good of themselves [i.e., one another] and say, “This is an obvious falsehood”?
“Why did they not produce for it four witnesses? And when they do not produce the witnesses, then it is they, in the sight of Allah, who are the liars.
“And if it had not been for the favor of Allah upon you and His mercy in this world and the Hereafter, you would have been touched for that in which you were involved by a great punishment
“When you received it with your tongues and said with your mouths that of which you had no knowledge and thought it was insignificant while it was, in the sight of Allah, tremendous.
“And why, when you heard it, did you not say, “It is not for us to speak of this; Subhan[Allah] this is a great slander”?
These ayat are crystal clear.
Notice that Allah says
when you heard it. So as soon as you hear such accusations of sexual misconduct from third parties, your IMMEDIATE reaction is: This is great slander (
buhtan adhim). Allah did
not say to investigate first, let a neutral party complete a report, etc., and then, after that if the accusation doesn’t hold up, call it slander. Rather, the required immediate response is to denounce it.
There is HUGE wisdom in this.
For one, it protects innocent people from getting their reputations tarnished. As mentioned in the report above, if people spread rumors about so-and-so committing immoral actions, that is a bell that cannot be unrung. We see how many men and women’s lives have been destroyed because they were labeled as fornicators, rapists, etc., and then it turned out they were completely innocent. But they can’t get their reputation and honor back. The supreme wisdom of Islam — not found in other religions — is to protect the innocent from this specific type of injury, while directing legitimate claims to official judicial authorities.
On a broader societal level, there is also great wisdom in not spreading hearsay about sexual indiscretion. If people spread accusations of zina, then this will destroy the morale of the community. It will also psychologically prime Muslims into thinking that zina is something that Muslims are secretly engaging in at a high(er) rate, which can make a person more likely to commit zina himself.
Numerous studies in psychology and sociology attest to this reality. People are more inclined to engage in stigmatized behaviors if they believe others are engaged in it, especially if they believe others are secretly engaged in it. This is called “norm perception.”
In the field of applied psychology, researchers and marketing strategists have long theorized how to manipulate norm perception in order to induce desired behavior in a population, such as conserving water, drinking alcohol “more responsibly,” or taking certain pharmaceuticals.
Perhaps the most widespread example of this is with homosexuality. The concept of “being in the closet” or “being on the down low” has been spread through mass media with thousands of articles, new reports, interviews. The idea is that there are countless people who are gay, but they are engaged in gay behavior in secret. Furthermore, they claim that the people who are most opposed to homosexuality are themselves secret homosexuals, i.e., they are hypocrites.
This is a powerful recipe for changing norms, changing psychology, and changing behaviors. This is a big part of the reason for the spread of LGBT
fawahish in society.
And this is exactly what Allah says in Surat al-Nur. After the ayat cited above, Allah says:
“Indeed, those who love that fahisha should be spread among those who have believed will have a painful punishment in this world and the Hereafter.” [24:19]
We might wonder: How is spreading rumors and slander (
buhtan) about sexual immorality connected to spreading fahisha? The
tafasir of this ayah explain that many of those who spread such rumors and accusations do so because they are
munafiqin who want to destroy Muslims and get Muslims to engage in exactly those immoral behaviors. Talking about wrong behaviors can induce such behavior, as discussed above.
But Allah tells us exactly how to prevent the munafiq from causing this damage. Simply shut him or her down. Don’t entertain the rumor. Don’t even listen to it.
Immediately denounce it as terrible slander.
Another teaching of Islam regarding this is not to advertise one’s private sins. The Prophet ﷺ said:
“All of my ummah will be forgiven except those who sin openly. It is a part of sinning openly when a man does something at night, then the following morning when Allah has concealed his sin, he says, ‘O So and so, I did such and such last night,’ when all night his Lord has concealed him and the next morning he uncovers what Allah had concealed.” [Bukhari and Muslim]
Again, we see the same wisdom. By talking about the private sin, one is contributing to normalizing the behavior by chipping away at the perceived stigma. Someone might be doing this intentionally — in order to get others to fall into his sin so he doesn’t feel bad about it — or unintentionally. Either way, the damaging effect is the same.
What we can also understand is that those hypocrites that love to see fahisha spread in the Muslim community would strategically go after those who are seen as religious figures and upholders of religious morality. Basically, they would target those Muslims who are prominent and known as pious and upright Muslims.
This is why we should call them “Imam Hunters.”
