Chapter: Rulings on Retaliatory Punishment (qisas)

The scholars are unanimously agreed that qisas for deliberate homicide is prescribed, once its conditions are fulfilled, because Allah the Exalted says: “O you who believe, retribution has been ordained for you regarding the slain: the free man for the free man, the slave for the slave, and the female for the female” (al-Baqarah 2:178). He also says: “We ordained for them therein: a life for a life” (al-Māʾidah 5:45). This was part of the Law of the Torah, and the rulings revealed to those before us remain binding for us unless our own law has come with something to the contrary. Allah further says: “And in retribution there is life for you, O people of understanding, so that you may become mindful” (al-Baqarah 2:179).

Imam al-Shawkani (d. 1250 AH) said: “That is, in this ruling which Allah has legislated for you there is life; for when a person knows that he will be put to death in retaliation if he kills another, he refrains from murder and is deterred from hastening toward it. Thus it becomes, in effect, life for human souls. This is an eloquent form of expression and a high degree of rhetoric, for the verse makes qisas—which is itself death—a source of life by virtue of the restraint it brings about among people, protecting their lives and preserving their existence. The address is aimed at those endowed with sound reason, because they are the ones who consider consequences and avoid what brings future harm. As for someone afflicted with foolishness, rashness, and frivolity, he gives no thought in the heat of anger and the surge of impetuousness to the outcome, nor does he ponder what lies ahead—just as one of their reckless killers once said: