Chapter on Expiation for Killing

1. No¹ expiation is due for deliberate homicide.

2. For any killing short of that, expiation becomes obligatory and is paid out of the killer’s own property, provided the life taken was inviolable—even that of a fetus.

3. A slave makes expiation by fasting, a non-Muslim by manumission, while everyone else expiates by freeing a believing slave; if he cannot manage that, he must fast two consecutive months. Feeding the poor is not an alternative here.

4. The expiation multiplies in proportion to the number of victims.

5. No expiation is required for killing someone whose blood may lawfully be shed—for example, a muḥṣan adulterer, an apostate, an enemy combatant (ḥarbī), an armed rebel (bāghī), a person executed in retaliation², or one killed in legitimate self-defence.