15 Preface وَاللّاتي يَأتينَ الفاحِشَةَ مِن نِسائِكُم فَاستَشهِدوا عَلَيهِنَّ أَربَعَةً مِنكُم ۖ فَإِن شَهِدوا فَأَمسِكوهُنَّ فِي البُيوتِ حَتّىٰ يَتَوَفّاهُنَّ المَوتُ أَو يَجعَلَ اللَّهُ لَهُنَّ سَبيلًاYusuf AliIf any of your women are guilty of lewdness,1 Take the evidence of four2 (Reliable) witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or God ordain for them some (other) way.3Most commentators understand this to refer to adultery or fornication: in that case they consider that the punishment was altered to 100 stripes by the later verse, 24:2. But I think it refers to unnatural crime between women, analogous to unnatural crime between men in 4:16 below; because (1) no punishment is specified here for the man, as would be the case where a man was involved in the crime; (2) the word, at lati, the purely feminine plural of al lati, is used for the parties to the crime; (3) the punishment is indefinite; see the next note but one.To protect the honour of women, stricter evidence is required, i.e., the evidence of four instead of the usual two witnesses. It is the same for adultery (see 24:4.)Keep them in prison until some definite order is received. Those who take the crime to be adultery or fornication construe this definite order (“some other way”) to mean some definite pronouncement by the Prophet under inspiration; this was the punishment of flogging under 24:2. for fornication, and stoning to death under the Prophet’s directive for adultery. If we understand the crime to be unnatural crime, we might presume, in the absence of any definite order (“some other way”) that the punishment would be similar to that for men in the next verse.