first crime and to prevent other women from committing a similar act. As such, there is no incompatibility between the two that would indicate that the first should be abrogated by the second. However, if a woman dies from flogging or stoning, the necessity of confining her to the house would of course be eliminated because the purpose [of such confinement] would have been obtained. Aside from that, the injunc‌ tion [regarding confinement] remains in force for the women for whom God has not appointed a way.
In short, whoever reflects on the verse will find no reason to suspect abrogation
regardless of whether it was revealed before or after the flogging verse [Q. ٢٤:٢].
As for the opinion regarding the abrogation of the second verse, that, too, is depen‌ dent on two points: first, that the pronoun in yatiyaniha (the two of you who are guilty thereof) refers to adultery; and, second, that the punishment (al- fdha ,r
harm") means punishmentthrough vilification, cursing, rebuke, and so on. Although there is no reason to support both these points, they are incompatible with the appar‌ ent sense of the verse, for the following reasons.
The dual form of the third person pronoun is used thrice in the second verse, and
undoubtedly its purport the third time is the same as it is the first two. It is evident that [all three times it] refers, in particular, to men. Consequently, the reference is to the coming together of two men, and not men and women in general. This is because the dual form of the pronoun would not be sound if it did not refer to two men. A better way would have been to use the plural form, as in the preceding verse. There is therefore a strong reason to maintain that the lewdness indicated in the second verse refers specifically to sodomy, and not to adultery or something more general than adultery and sodomy. If this is the case, then the subject of the verse is extraneous to the subject of the verse on•flogging.
In contrast, even if we admit that the ruling in the verse includes the adulterer, there is still no reason to suggest that a specific punishment is required by the verse, except what has been reported from Ibn Abbas, namely, vilification and beating with shoes. However, this is not the proof that establishes abrogation. Thus, the obvious course is to take the verse in its literal sense and then qualify it by means of the flogging verse or the ruling about stoning, which is established through definitive practice.
In mm,
we] follow the opinion of others, or trust the single transmissions that have no theo‌
retical or practical use.

(١٢) Lawful unto you are all beyond those mentioned, so that ... (Q. ٤:٢٤)٤٠

It is said that the above verse has been abrogated by the traditions that prohibit mar‌ riage for women other than those mentioned in the verses. The validity of this claim depends on the abrogator being a particular and subsequent verse abrogating, rather than qualifying, an earlier and a general verse.
The fact is that the particular verse functions as a restricter of the general, whether preceding it or succeeding it, and not as its abrogator. It is for this reason that a single tradition, which meets the condition for its admission as evidence, is sufficient to par‌ ticularize a general ruling, as we shall discuss in our treatment of the permissibility of particularizing the Quranic injunction by means of a single tradition. But that would