What is "zina"

Zināʾ (زِنَاء) or zina (زِنًى or زِنًا) is an Islamic law concerning unlawful sexual relations between Muslims who are not married to one another through a nikah (Islamic marriage). It includes extramarital sex and premarital sex, such as adultery (consensual sexual relations outside marriage), fornication (consensual sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons), and homosexuality (consensual sexual relations between same-sex partners).

In the four schools of Sunni fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), and the two schools of Shi'a fiqh, the term zināʾ is a sin of sexual intercourse that is not allowed by Sharia (Islamic law) and classed as a hudud crime (class of Islamic punishments that are fixed for certain crimes that are considered to be "claims of God"). To prove an act of zina, a qadi (religious judge) in a sharia court relies on an unmarried woman's pregnancy, the confession in the name of Allah, or four witnesses to the actual act of penetration. The last two types of prosecutions are uncommon; most prosecuted cases of zina in the history of Islam have been pregnant unmarried women. In some schools of Islamic law, a pregnant woman accused of zina who denies sex was consensual must prove she was raped with four eyewitnesses testifying before the court. This has led to many cases where rape victims have been punished for zina. Pressing charges of zina without required eyewitnesses is considered slander (Qadhf, القذف) in Islam, itself a hudud crime.

The above sense of zina is not to be confused with the woman's name Zina or Zeina(زانيه). The name has a different linguistic root (Greek xen-), a different meaning ("guest, stranger"), is pronounced differently (either Zīnah or Zaynah), and is usually spelled differently.

Zina (الزنا) is the Arabic term for extramarital sex in Islam.

Zina may also refer to:

• Zina (given name)
• The Yelang, a historical political entity and tribal alliance in what is now south-west China
• Zina (film), a 1985 film
• Zina streaming media system, a streaming media system
• One of the characters described in OMC's song "How Bizarre"
• Zina, Cameroon, a commune in Extrême-Nord region

Zina ( 1985) is an award-winning film by director Ken McMullen. It tells a story of a twentieth century Antigone, Zinaida Volkova ( Domiziana Giordano), daughter of Leon Trotsky. In 1930s Berlin, Zina is being treated by the adlerian psychotherapist Professor Arthur Kronfeld ( Ian McKellen). During this psychoanalysis, which includes some hypnosis, she recalls incidents both from her own life and that of her father, as a leader of the Russian Revolution, as the holder of state power and later in exile. Against the background of the progressive deterioration of the situation in Europe, threatened by the rise of fascism and the spectre of the Second World War, Zina’s identification with Antigone becomes more and more credible. What were her hallucinations begin to take objective form on the streets. The dynamics of Greek tragedy, always waiting in the wings, step forward to take control. Zina has won many awards and is regarded by many as one of the great political motion pictures.

Zina is a given name. Notable people with the name include:

• Zina Andrianarivelo-Razafy (born 1951), Madagascan diplomat
• Zina Bethune (born 1945), American actress, dancer and choreographer
• Zina D. H. Young (1821–1901), American social activist and religious leader
• Zina Garrison (born 1963), American tennis player
• Zina Goldrich (born 1964), musical theater composer
• Zina Kocher (born 1982), Canadian biathlete
• Zina Mahjoub, Sudanese poet and song writer
• Zina Pitcher (1797–1872), American physician, politician and academic administrator
• Zina Saunders (born 1953), Manhattan-based artist-writer
• Zina Zaflow (born 1980), American actress of Iraqi origin