Re: Rape - Quran and Hadith
In Islam, there are two types of punishment. One that a person would get from Allah after judgment day (and Muslims in this world should not be concerned about that) and other what a person can get from authorities in this world (and we Muslims should be more concerned about that).
In my above posts, I talked about punishment that authority can give to perpetrator and not what Allah would give to person guilty.
In Islam, authorities only act when a crime happened that effects the society and that is the reason clause of witness requirement is very stringent. If there is any reason that nullify evidence (even denial that may seems untrue, but can not be proven otherwise) than punishment cannot be given.
Reason is simple, that is, in Islam purpose of authorities is not just to give punishment, but to provide justice and eradicate crimes using different means, and that includes spread of education, awareness campaign by government, developing sense of responsibilities, encouraging to live within law, making people believe convincingly and be proud of being Muslim, and so on.
As for pregnancy, I gave many reasons that nullify reasons to believe consensual sex happened. Rather, there is possibility that rape happened (knowingly or unknowingly) that is not reported … and also not reporting could be for various other reasons (that I mentioned too). I believe that even if judge’s daughter or daughter of those who try to promote such ruling (pregnancy is evidence of adultery or fornication) would get raped, they may also tell their daughter to keep quite.
[Note: Famous interview of Munawar Hasan is evidence, where he urged women raped to keep quite if there are not enough witnesses … though it is different matter that he was wrong in his assessment, as rape case should not depend on witnesses, but his assessment was based on belief that witness requirement and punishment should be same for rape and consensual sex, so he urged to keep quite].
In today’s world, that is more evident, as we also know that pregnancy do not even need sexual intercourse, because a woman can even get pregnant artificially. With various types of drugs, a pregnancy can also happen without girl knowing if she got raped or not.
So, since pregnancy does not prove what happened (cannot determine the cause being consensual or forced), it should not and cannot be used to determine guilt in Islam.
I gave example of Marium (AS), because whatever is mentioned in Quran … that can be used ‘as argument (daleel)’ to justify or annul beliefs and rulings.