Re: Share a Hadeeth that had a profound impact on you
Volume 5, Book 58, Number 188:
Narrated 'Amr bin Maimun:
During the pre-lslamic period of ignorance I saw a she-monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too, stoned it along with them.
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Al-Salâm `Alaykum wa Rahmah Allah wa Barakâtuh.
The following is narrated from `Amr b. Maymûn in Sahîh al-Bukhârî (3849):
I had seen in the times of ignorance some monkeys who surrounded a she-monkey who had committed unlawful sexual intercourse and they stoned it, so I stoned it along with them.
In Fath al-Bârî (7/184), Ibn Hajar al-Asqalânî gives another narration of this event fromAmr b. Maymûn that goes into far greater detail:
I was in Yemen tending the sheep of my people up upon an elevation. A male monkey came with a female and laid his head on her hand. Then a smaller monkey came and beckoned towards her, so she gently slipped her hand out from under the cheek of the first monkey and followed him. He mated with her while I looked on. Then she returned and gently tried to slip her hand back under the cheek of the first monkey, but he woke up suddenly, smelled her, and cried out. Then the monkeys gathered round and he began screaming while pointing towards her with his hand. The monkeys went all about and came back with that monkey that I recognized. They dug a pit for the two of them and stoned them both. So I had witnessed stoning being carried out by other than Adam’s progeny.
These are not hadîth from the Prophet (peace be upon him). They are just some behaviors `Amr b. Maymûn witnessed being exhibited by some animals. It is merely his interpretation that the animals were stoning one another as a punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse. There is no way that he could have known their true motives.
Ibn Hajar writes [Fath al-Bârî (7/185)]:
It is not necessary from an event resembling unlawful sexual intercourse and stoning that it was really a case of unlawful sexual intercourse and a prescribed punishment. He merely described it the way he did since it resembled these things. It does not mean that legal accountability was being applied to animals.
And Allah knows best.
Fatwâ Department Research Committee of IslamToday.net chaired by Sheikh `Abd al-Wahhâb al-Turayrî
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