In case anyone should plead that, in worst-case scenario, these are just leftovers of now fading traditions, don't forget that the Sultan of Brunei has just, within the last month, enacted BRAND NEW laws mandating stoning to death for adultery: which doesn't, in Islam, it appears, necessarily mean adultery in fact, but any sort of extra-marital intercourse; or even just miscegenation -- back to the ongoing Sudan thing again, where the condemned woman was legally married, but to someone the judge decided was of another faith.