This excerpt is taken from the book by Fazilat-ul-Sheikh Abdul Salam Rustami From Denial of Hadith to Denial of Quran.
Hadith 34: Stoning a monkey for the crime of adultery
Amr bin Maymoon narrates that I saw a monkey during the time of ignorance around whom many monkeys had gathered. She had committed adultery, and they all stoned her, so I also stoned her with them.
Reference: Sahih al-Bukhari, Manaqib al-Ansar, Chapter on Oaths in the Age of Ignorance, Hadith: 3849, and Hadith location, p. 1025
There are three objections to this hadith:
➊ Are monkeys accountable creatures bound by Shariah rulings?
➋ Was it established that the monkey or female monkey who was stoned was married?
➌ Only one is mentioned, that is, the female monkey was stoned, so why was the male monkey spared or vice versa?
Before answering, the commentators have presented the details of this incident as follows. Amr bin Maymoon says that I was in Yemen among the goats of my people. On a high place, I saw a monkey bringing a female monkey and placing her hand under his head and sleeping. Then a small monkey came and signaled to the female monkey. She slowly withdrew her hand from under the first monkey’s head and went with the small monkey. She associated with him while I was watching. After the association, the female monkey returned and slowly began to place her hand again under the first monkey’s head, so that monkey woke up and was frightened. He sniffed the female monkey and screamed, then all the monkeys gathered. He kept pointing at that female monkey and screaming, indicating that she had committed adultery. Finally, the other monkeys went to the right and left and brought the small monkey whom I recognized. They dug a pit for that monkey and the female monkey and stoned them both, so I saw stoning among animals besides humans.
Answer:
This is not a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) or any companion because Amr ibn Maymun is a Tabi'i (successor) and he has narrated an eyewitness incident. The narrator and other narrators in the chain are trustworthy people, so there is no harm in accepting it as an incident. Accepting it does not affect anyone's faith; rather, it serves as a support to show the abhorrence of adultery. Therefore, it is not wise to exclude the entire collection of hadith from the chain of authenticity and to propagate against the hadith because of this incident.
Among animals, the monkey is a creature that is closer to humans in terms of senses, consciousness, and imitation. Street performers show strange and amazing acts with monkeys at fairs. I myself have seen such tricks of monkeys in the mountains of Taif that they appear almost human, and for these reasons, Darwin considered the monkey to be the ancestor of humans, although this theory is completely false.
