The Fourth Issue:

Some of the notable objected to the description of substitution as previously outlined (p. #, #), arguing that such a form of substitution does not exist. This objection dismissed for two reasons: First: While the claim that it does not exist today may have some validity, the assertion that it has never existed at all is incorrect. Historical evidence shows that the Jews, for instance, substituted the punishment of stoning by merely blackening the face of an adulterer (by smearing it with coal and avoiding the prescribed punishment). The Prophet ﷺ asked them, "What do you find in the Torah concerning stoning?" They replied, "We disgrace them, and they are whipped" (Bukhari 3635). In another narration, the Prophet ﷺ asked, "Do you not find stoning in the Torah?" They responded, "We do not find anything about it" (Bukhari 4556). When one of their readers recited from the Torah, he concealed the Āyah on stoning by covering it with his hand, reading only what came before and after it (Bukhari 4556). By doing so, they denied Allāh's ruling and replaced it with another, falsely claiming that their substitution was the ruling of Allāh. Second: The objective not to apply the concept of substitution to contemporary rulers, even if that requires altering the nature of the issue. Rather, the intention is to accurately define the scenario meant by the early scholars, who conveyed a consensus on the ruling of disbelief in this context, regardless of how rare, infrequent, or even nonexistent such an occurrence may be.