The monkeys report
The claim — as circulated
A hadith in al-Bukhari has the Prophet participating in the stoning of a monkey for adultery, which is plainly insane.
The rebuttal
This report is the showpiece of the genre, and it is misread in a way that the collection itself corrects on the same page.
The report
Al-Bukhari, vol. 5, book 58, no. 188. The narrator states: during the pre-Islamic period of ignorance, I saw a she-monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too stoned it along with them.
Who is speaking
The speaker is not the Prophet. It is a Companion, ‘Amru bin Maimun. He is describing what he witnessed, and what he then believed, during the age of ignorance, before Islam reached him.
In the sciences of hadith the report is classified mawquf (stopped), meaning a saying traced to a Companion and not attributed to the Prophet. It is therefore not a prophetic saying, it is not ascribed to him, and it cannot serve as the basis for any ruling in Islam. The Prophet is not present in the account and does not participate in it.
What the report actually shows
It is a record of the superstition of pre-Islamic Arabia, preserved by a man who had lived in it and left it. The same society buried infant daughters alive and performed the tawaf (circumambulation of the Ka’bah) naked. The report belongs to the catalogue of what Islam displaced.
Anyone who has read as far as the narrator’s name has the answer. The claim survives only among readers who have not.
Sources
- Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 5, book 58, no. 188 (narrated by 'Amru bin Maimun).