if they bear witness against them, imprison them in separate apartments until death release them, or God affordeth them a way to escape." After a time this cruel punish ment was mitigated, and the offending woman might elect to suffer in its place the punishment ordained in its stead by the Sonna, according to which the maidens were to be scourged with a hundred stripes, and to be banished for a full year, and the mar ried women to be stoned. A slave guilty of adultery was condemned to only half of the punishment of a free woman, on account of her supposed ignorance; that is, she was to receive fifty stripes and be banished for six months; she was not to be stoned for that could not be inflicted by halves. To check the spread of licentiousness Mahomet enacted that the wicked woman should be joined to the wicked man, and the wicked man to the wicked woman; but the good woman should be married to the good man, and the good man to the good woman. (Sura, XXIV.) False witnesses were not allowed to go unpunished; "they who falsely accuse modest women who behave in a negligent manner and are true believers, shall be cursed in this world and in the world to come; and they shall suffer a severe punish
ment. Those who accused women of reputation of adultery or fornication, and produced not four witnesses of the fact, were to be scourged with fourscore stripes, and their testimony was never to be received, unless indeed they should repent and amend." (Sura, XXIV.) The Moslems say there are three classes of persons who have no religion, Bedawin Arabs, muleteers and women. Mahomet declared that when he looked down into hell he found the greater part of the wretches confined there to be women. Yet women were to be in heaven accord ing to the Prophet's ideas, for the paradise of true believers is only an ideal heaven; he writes, "Say, О believer, what shall I declare of greater benefit for those that fear God, than gardens through which flow rivers of water, where they shall dwell for ever, and there shall be women who are pure virgins. Damsels having large black eyes will there. Therein will be agreeable damsels, whom no man or spirit has hurt. There shall be young and beautiful virgins. . . . And near the elect will be houris with large black eyes, having complexions like rubies and pearls. Verily we have created the damsels of Para dise by a peculiar creation." (Koran, III, 13; LII, 20; LV, 56; LVI, 22, 35.)
