Authenticity and interpretation of the hadith about monkeys and stoning

Answer

Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, in Fath al-Bari (his commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 3849, in the chapter "Al-Qasama in the Pre-Islamic Period of Ignorance"), clarifies several points about the report of monkeys stoning another monkey: (1) this is not a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ — it is a report from ʿAmr bin Maimun, a Tabiʿi who witnessed this before Islam and later became Muslim; the Prophet ﷺ neither said it, witnessed it, nor commented on it. (2) Animals are not morally accountable (mukallaf) — they have no religious responsibility and are not subject to hadd punishments like stoning for zina, so the monkeys were not "executing Islamic law." (3) ʿAmr bin Maimun interpreted what he saw through the lens of his own pre-Islamic culture, where stoning was a known punishment for adultery, and projected that concept onto animal behavior. (4) Al-Bukhari included this report to document Jahiliyyah customs and show pre-Islamic Arab society, as historical context, not legal evidence. Ibn Hajar's conclusion is that this tells us about ʿAmr and Jahiliyyah, not about Islamic law or animal ethics, and no legal ruling should be derived from it.