Muhammad, the son of Abdullah and Amina, was orphaned at a young age and raised by uncles in an ancient Mecca that had a business culture and popular reputation in many ways like modern Panama's. In his time, power and influence trumped law and tradition, usually to the detriment of widows and orphans, whose property was usually taken away by those stronger than themselves.

Though he never learned to read, eventually Muhammad became a small-time merchant, running camel caravans from Mecca to Damascus and other Middle Eastern cities. He was hired by a rich widow named Khadija, and took care of her business without the expected cheating. She was so impressed that she married him.

One day in a desert cave, after prolonged fasting and meditation, Muhammad had a vision, wherein he saw and heard the Angel Gabriel, who commanded him to read and urged him to "arise and warn," and to exhort people to observe God's law as revealed through the prophets and turn their backs on idolatry, drunkenness, gambling, sharp business tactics and lewd behavior.

Though it is not generally known in Western cultures, Muhammad also preached that women do have rights that men are bound to respect, and that a married woman's property is her own and not her husband's. The Anglo-American Common Law didn't catch up with Islamic law on that point until late in the 19th century, when the Married Women's Property Acts were passed in most English-speaking jurisdictions.

Muhammad was treated as something of a nut case back in Mecca, and though he acquired a following there he was eventually run out of town. His persecutors blew it --- they could have tolerated him as the town weirdo, but when they forced him to flee he was taken in by the people of Medina, who made him their warrior king. It wasn't long before Muhammad was back in Mecca at the head of a conquering army.

From time to time, Muhammad would go into a trance-like state and start expound in classical Arabic, using elements of rhyme, meter and alliteration that don't translate into other languages. His friend Abu Bakr wrote these recitations down, and collectively they are known as The Quran ("The Lecture" in Arabic).

Muslims don't believe that Muhammad was God, or the son of God, or the founder of Islam. They believe that he was the greatest of God's messengers, the last of a group that includes Jesus Christ, Moses and most of the Judaeo-Christian prophets. They believe that while he was in that peculiar state that summoned Abu Bakr to play the part of scribe, God spoke through Muhammad. Thus the Quran is believed to be the direct word of God, as distinct for the more ordinary pronouncements and earthly acts of Muhammad himself, those latter being considered the hadiths which, along with the higher authority of the Quran, make up the sunnah.

Khadija, some 15 years Muhammad's senior, eventually died. After her death Muhammad, now a powerful political figure, married a number of women. His polygamy, which he didn't practice during Khadija's lifetime, was in large part a politically motivated series of tribal alliances that led to the rapid expansion of Muhammad's power through the Arabian Peninsula.

One of Muhammad's wives was Aisha, the daughter of Abu Bakr. She was much younger than her husband, and at one point was the object of a whispering campaign, by which she was impugned as an adulteress.

So what does the Quran say about adultery?

(Understand first that any translation is not considered the Quran as such by devout Muslims, because that would represent a human interpretation of God's exact Arabic words. But also know that Islam is an evangelizing religion, and that Muslims have translated the Quran into many languages with the caveat that their holy scriptures lose that character in translation. Probably the best English-language translation is by an Englishman who converted to Islam, Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, and whose "The Meaning of the Glorious Quran" owes a heavy literary debt to the King James Bible.)

Anyway, consider these two passages:

"The adulterer and the adulteress, scourge ye each one of them (with) a hundred stripes. And let not pity for the twain withhold you from obedience to Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a party of believers witness their punishment."

"And those who accuse honorable women but bring not four witnesses, scourge them (with) eighty stripes and never (afterward) accept their testimony --- They indeed are evil-doers…."

So how is it that in the name of Islam, Nigerian divorcee Amina Lawal has been sentenced to death by stoning because she had a child out of wedlock, while the child's father is not to be punished?

It's all quite simple. The society and court that sentenced Amina Lawal perverts Islam, in plain violation of the Quran's specific provisions.

If one gets into the entirety of the sunnah, the hadiths as well as the Quran, and the traditions of Islamic jurisprudence, the deficiency of the case against Amina Lawal becomes even more glaring. Witnesses to adultery must be respectable Muslim eyewitnesses to the act --- but of course, respectable Muslims aren't voyeurs. Circumstantial evidence is inadmissible. Thus having a child out of wedlock, or having a confession extracted from her, are insufficient proofs of Amina Lawal's adultery.

This sort of jurisprudence should not seem odd to Christians. There is, after all, the famous Gospel story of Jesus Christ's intercession on behalf of a woman about to be stoned to death for an offense akin to Amina Lawal's. Notice that Jesus didn't purport to repeal Jewish strictures against adultery, but rather questioned the would-be executioners' standing to make the accusation or pass or execute the sentence.

Let's not dignify what's happening to Amina Lawal by calling it "Sharia" (Islamic law). It's nothing of the sort. What we are dealing with here is vicious sexism and reactionary tribal custom, a Muslim analogue to the sort of "Christianity" that the Ku Klux Klan preaches.

Nigeria is committing a major human rights violation in this case and no argument about self-determination or moral relativism ought to stand in the way of serious economic and diplomatic sanctions if Amina Lawal is executed.

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