A lot of that comes from Hadiths, or sayings about the prophet Muhammad. Most written several hundred years after he lived. There's multiple, contradictory accounts. Personally I don't think speculative secondhand historical accounts should be trusted at all.
And yeah. Those really need to be acknowledged and rejected if Islam is to survive. There's no real reason that these Hadiths should or need to be believed, and yet Hadiths that claim things like "the Prophet Muhammad defecated in public in the direction of Israel" are still rather widely accepted Hadiths.
And the fact people accept such Hadiths is what leads to a lot of violent interpretations.
But there are Muslims within that community working to try to debunk and discredit those Hadiths as being false.
Note that the verse in question doesn't call for killing them slowly by dismemberment, but killing them or removing a limb and making them unable to return to their warlike ways.
Is it better to be dead or crippled?? I think most real life disabled persons would say the latter, but ultimately I think it varies from person to person.
The verse in question, I assume, you are referencing is 5:38-39. First of note that if you repent of your crime, nothing happens to you. So really when you were caught, if you refused to acknowledge your act was wrong, only then would the hand be "cut".
The second thing of note is that saying the hand should be "cut" could either mean "cut off" or that it should be cut/scarred to mark the person as a known thief. There are some Muslims who believe the former interpretation and some who believe the latter.
And yes, those who believe the former are a problem that should be addressed.
As a member of the Baha'i Faith, I should begin by stating that I don't believe Islamic laws are a good idea for implementing in the modern era. Nor do I believe Christian or Jewish laws appropriate for modern society.
So I won't seek to defend stoning adulterers in the Islamic, Christian, or Jewish Laws in modern society.
However, I think such laws should be addressed in the context of the time in which they were made.
Adultery today isn't too big of a deal. The biggest issue in adultery, to me, would be the fact that you are inadvertently exposing your primary partner to significant risk of sexually transmitted diseases without their knowledge or consent.
Now in the modern era, this isn't too big of an issue. It's still a significant issue but I would not say it is that dangerous, thanks to modern medicine and safe sex practices.
But in the ancient, medieval, and renaissance eras, where there were STD epidemics like syphilis that caused you to go insane and your flesh to rot from your body, I believe the extra risks that adultery causes to their partner makes adultery downright horrible. Being an adulterer in such an age exposes your partner to such health risks that at best, it is reckless endangerment, and at worst, it is manslaughter.
In the modern era, it could be argued that the same applies, with the seriousness of things like HIV that adultery should constitute reckless endangerment as well, but it is not nearly as severe due to safe sex advancements and medical advancements as a whole.
So given the severity of the crime, and with the horrors of syphilis I think it is unmistakable that it is indeed a severe crime, a strict punishment back in the day makes some sense. Keep in mind that in the medieval era mass incarceration was not economically possible for societies. You could imprison some criminals but logistically you had to find other ways, execution, restitution, or banishment, to punish criminals. The massive jail systems available today are only thanks to economic and technological advances.
Of course, by all means, I don't think this law, nor the Christian and Jewish equivalents, should be enacted in the modern era. If someone of those faiths wishes to defend it as such, that's up to them, but I don't think such a thing makes any sense in the modern era.
But at the time there is a degree of sense to it.
Note that the Quran mandates a lesser punishment for an unmarried man or woman than the punishment mandated for a married man or woman, because if you are unmarried adultery puts less people at risk of disease.
And the Quran does go on to state that if a person repents of their adultery, like many things, they escape punishment (24:5).
(If the Quran was ever enacted to its most literal sense I'd argue it would be almost too lenient!!
For most of the crimes you could say to the judge "Yes I am guilty, but I'm very sorry!!" and by the letter of the law you'd be free to go!!)Also, to address your concern on false witness, that is why the Quran goes further than the Bible and requires six people to bear witness to the adultery before it is actionable!!
And of course, a man or woman could still get five friends to testify falsely against their partner, but that's sort of a flaw in every legal system that can't be rectified even with modern technology.
Personally, though, if a person is an unrepentant adulterer in an age where STD's are serious and dangerous, I find it rather hard to pity the person who endangers their partner in such a way and can't even acknowledge they were wrong in doing so.
But while it makes sense for a certain era, Muslims should (and many in the west do) acknowledge that the law has no place in the modern world, and was only for the times of that law's revelation.
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