Light (Al-Noor)
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
۞ A Surah [is this] which We have bestowed from on high, and which We have laid down in plain terms; and in it have We bestowed from on high messages which are clear [in themselves,] so that you might keep [them] in mind. 1 The woman and the man guilty of illegal sexual intercourse, flog each of them with a hundred stripes. Let not pity withhold you in their case, in a punishment prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a party of the believers witness their punishment. (This punishment is for unmarried persons guilty of the above crime but if married persons commit it, the punishment is to stone them to death, according to Allah's Law). 2 The adulterer marries not but an adulteress or a Mushrikah and the adulteress none marries her except an adulterer or a Muskrik [and that means that the man who agrees to marry (have a sexual relation with) a Mushrikah (female polytheist, pagan or idolatress) or a prostitute, then surely he is either an adulterer, or a Mushrik (polytheist, pagan or idolater, etc.) And the woman who agrees to marry (have a sexual relation with) a Mushrik (polytheist, pagan or idolater) or an adulterer, then she is either a prostitute or a Mushrikah (female polytheist, pagan, or idolatress, etc.)]. Such a thing is forbidden to the believers (of Islamic Monotheism). 3 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, 4 except that of those who afterwards repent and reform themselves; God is All-forgiving and All-merciful. 5 Those who accuse their wives and do not have any witnesses except themselves, should swear four times in the name of God, the testimony of each such person being that he is speaking the truth, 6 and the fifth time, that God's curse may be upon him if he is telling a lie. 7 And it shall avert the punishment from her if she bear witness before Allah four times that the thing he saith is indeed false, 8 and a fifth time, that the wrath of God shall be upon her, if he should be of the truthful. 9 Were it not for God's grace and His mercy upon you, [you would have come to grief] and God is wise, acceptor of repentance. 10