The Stoning Verse: The Verse That Was Recited but Never Written

A Sermon in the Caliph's Final Year

Medina, 23 AH. Umar ibn al-Khattab has just returned from what will prove to be his last Hajj. Within weeks, a dagger at the dawn prayer will end his life. But on this Friday he climbs the minbar of the Prophet's mosque with something weighing on him — something he wants placed on the record before the generation that heard the revelation directly has passed away. What he says from that pulpit is preserved in the most authenticated collections of Sunni Islam, and its subject is a verse: a verse he insists was revealed, recited, memorized and acted upon — and which no reader today will find anywhere between the two covers of the mushaf.

This article does not mock any religion. It will do what we always do: open the books, present the texts exactly as they are, with full references — the difficulty as it stands, and the answers the scholars gave, as they stand. The verdict, as always, is yours.