Farzana Hassan and Hasan Mahmud [President and Director, Muslim Canadian Congress]: "The Iranian government's decision to commute its earlier stoning sentence against four adults convicted of adultery is the right decision and a welcome move. It is also encouraging news that Iran has put a moratorium on such punishments, however, the nation must review its current laws on adultery with a view to eventually decriminalizing it as a capital offense.

According to strict Islamic rules of testimony, the offense is extremely difficult to prove and is often highly prejudicial to women. This is borne out by the disproportionate number of women facing such convictions and executions in countries like Iran and Nigeria.

There is also much disparity in the treatment of men and women with respect to what constitutes adultery: a man may marry up to four wives concurrently. His multiple relationships enjoy religious sanction whereas women are denied similar opportunities under Sharia law. This disparity in opportunity immediately places women at an enormous disadvantage, both in society and under the law. Whereas men have the opportunity to express their adulterous urges under the cover of polygamy, a woman is immediately considered a transgressor when she enters into a sexual relationship with another man. Despite the inequalities in the religious rights of men and women, the punishment for adultery is the same for both. This is a blatant injustice and of itself necessitates a revisiting of laws on adultery and its prescribed punishments.

The decriminalization of adultery is warranted for other reasons as well. First, there is no Quranic prescription on adultery that requires the guilty parties to be stoned to death. The recommended punishments for adultery in the Quran are flogging, confinement, "half" punishment for female slaves, as well as the option to repent after the commission of such acts. Stoning to death is based more on hadith or the oral traditions and precedents of the prophet, and only upon a full confession by the parties.

The only known precedent of a sentence of adultery being carried out during the time of the prophet clearly indicates that the punishment was administered only after the man confessed to the offense thrice.

The Quranic option to repent from conduct deemed sinful in Islam must be used as a basis to decriminalize adultery in Iran and wherever else it remains a capital offense. By criminalizing adultery and issuing death sentences after convictions, this option is denied to the "transgressors" – a course of action in clear violation of the Quran."