- If he kills his benefactor by mistake, he is allowed to inherit from the latter’s property but not from the blood money. The rationale, according to them, is that he did not hasten the estate to himself through the act of killing, whereas the blood money is an obligation he owes; it is meaningless for a person to inherit something that he himself must pay.
Surveying the various opinions, the middle course appears to be the one that rules: any killing that makes the killer financially liable bars him from inheritance, while a killing that carries no liability does not. This is the position of the Hanbalis and the Hanafis. Whenever liability is incurred, the killer is deemed inexcusable and responsible, and thus he is deprived of the estate. Where no liability arises, the killer is excused and free of responsibility, so he is not prevented from inheriting. Were we to follow the Shafiʿi view and treat every form of killing as an impediment to inheritance, the obligatory penal limits (hudud) would go unenforced and rights such as retributive killing (qisas) would not be fulfilled.
Hence the Prophet’s general statement, “The killer inherits nothing,” is to be understood as applying only to wrongful killing that entails liability.