Zina

Zināʾ (زِنَاء) or zina (زِنًى or زِنًا) is an Islamic law concerning unlawful sexual relations between male and female. Historically, sexual relations with concubines, who are known as “those whom your right hands possess” in the Qur'an, was permissible in Islam.

However, most modern Muslims believe that Islam no longer permits concubinage and that sexual relations are religiously permissible only within marriage. In modern times, the term zina often refers to sexual relations between males and females who are not married to one another through a nikah, and includes extramarital sex, premarital sex, adultery (sex outside the marriage), fornication, incest (sexual relationship between two family members), bestiality, and rape.

In the four schools of Sunni fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), and the two schools of Shi'a fiqh, the term zināʾ is a sin of sexual intercourse that is not allowed by Sharia (Islamic law) and classed as a hudud crime (class of Islamic punishments that are fixed for certain crimes that are considered to be "claims of God"). To prove an act of zina, a qadi (religious judge) in a sharia court relies on an unmarried woman's pregnancy, the confession in the name of Allah, or four witnesses to the actual act of penetration. The last two types of prosecutions are uncommon. Most cases of zina in the history of Islam have been pregnant unmarried women. In some schools of Islamic law, a pregnant woman accused of zina who denies sex was consensual must prove she was raped with four eye-witnesses testifying before the court. This has led to many cases where rape victims have been punished for zina. Pressing charges of zina without required eyewitnesses is considered slander (Qadhf, القذف) in Islam, itself a hudud crime. The punishment for zina is stoning the accused to death.

The above sense of zina is not to be confused with the woman's name Zina or Zeina (زينة). The name has a different linguistic root (Greek xen-). It also has a different meaning ("guest, stranger"), is pronounced differently (either Zīnah or Zaynah), and is usually spelled differently.

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