1.0 General Introduction

Since the beginning of history, Zina has always been seen as an evil. There is complete unanimity of views among all social systems namely Roman, Indian, Greek, Jewish, Egyptian that the act is religiously sinful, morally wicked, socially evil. Social systems around the world have always considered illegal intercourse between a man and a woman as a serious crime and have prescribed serious punishment for it.1 The first common lapse was the distinction between adultery and fornication. Adultery is a punishable crime and fornication is taken to be an ordinary offence.2 Zina is a long-standing evil, which the Holy Qur‟an and earlier scriptures have frowned upon. The Mosaic Law provides punishment for such offence as follows. If a man is found sleeping with another man‟s wife both of them i.e. the man and the woman must die3 or if a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take them both to the town and stone them to death, the girl because she was in the town and did not scream for help and the man because he violated another man‟s wife you must purge the evil from among you