The Qur'an (Oxford World's Classics)

part of a day, but ask those who keep count.’
114He will say, ‘You
stayed but a little, if you had only known. 
115Did you think We had
created you in vain, and that you would not be brought back to Us?’
116Exalted be God, the true King, there is no god but Him, the
Lord of the Glorious Throne! 
117Whoever prays to another god
alongside Him –
– a god for whose existence he has no evidence –
– will
face his reckoning with his Lord. Those who reject the truth will not
prosper. 
118Say [Prophet], ‘Lord, forgive and have mercy: You are
the most merciful of all.’
The Believers
219
23: 118

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24. LIGHT
This Medinan sura clari
fies several regulations for the Muslim community,
mainly to do with marriage, modesty, obedience to the Prophet, and appropri-
ate behaviour in the household. The initial context is the false rumour against
Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, who was left behind unwittingly by her travelling
companions after wandering away in search of a dropped necklace. She was
escorted back to Medina by a Muslim man coming later who found her there.
The sura is named after the Verse of Light (verses 
35–6) where God’s light is
contrasted to the darkness in which the disbelievers 
find themselves engulfed.
In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy
1This is a sura We have sent down and made obligatory: We have
sent down clear revelations in it, so that you may take heed. 
2Strike
the adulteress and the adulterer
a
one hundred times.
b
Do not let
compassion for them keep you from carrying out God’s law –– if you
believe in God and the Last Day –– and ensure that a group of
believers witnesses the punishment. 
3The adulterer is only [fit] to
marry
c
an adulteress or an idolatress, and the adulteress is only [
fit]
to marry an adulterer or an idolater: such behaviour is forbidden to
believers. 
4As for those who accuse chaste women of fornication, and
then fail to provide four witnesses, strike them eighty times, and
reject their testimony ever afterwards: they are the lawbreakers,
5except for those who repent later and make amends––God is most
forgiving and merciful.
6As for those who accuse their own wives of adultery, but have no
other witnesses, let each one four times call God to witness that he is
telling the truth, 
7and, the fifth time, call God to reject him if he is
lying;
8punishment shall be averted from his wife if she in turn four
times calls God to witness that her husband is lying 
9and, the fifth
time, calls God to reject her if he is telling the truth.
a
The crime of zina in Arabic covers all extramarital sexual intercourse between a
man and a woman.
b
Jalada in Arabic means ‘hit the skin’ with the hand or anything else. There are
reports that people used shoes, clothes, etc. (Bukhari, Hudud
4).
c
This is not an injunction but a statement of fact, emphasizing the guilt of both.
There is another opinion that yankihu is used in its original sense of ‘copulate’. Which-
ever translation is used, this is not part of the punishment but a condemnation of the
crime.

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10If it were not for God’s bounty and mercy towards you, if it were
not that God accepts repentance and is wise . . .!
a
11It was a group
from among you that concocted the lie
b
–– do not consider it a bad
thing for you [people]; it was a good thing –– and every one of them
will be charged with the sin he has earned. He who took the greatest