Next, if the legal heir is capable of carrying out the retribution in the proper Sharīʿah manner, he may do so; otherwise, the judge instructs him to appoint someone who can exact it on his behalf.

The sounder of the two scholarly views is that the offender should be dealt with exactly as he dealt with the victim. Allah Most High says, “If you retaliate, then retaliate with the like of that with which you were afflicted” (16:126), and He says, “Whoever transgresses against you, transgress against him in the same way that he transgressed against you” (2:194). The Prophet ﷺ likewise ordered that the head of a Jewish man be crushed because he had crushed the head of an Anṣārī girl.

Imam Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751 AH) said, “Both the Qur’an and the scales of justice require that the offender be treated as he treated the victim, just as the Prophet ﷺ did. The Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the reports from the Companions all concur on this …” End quote.

Accordingly, if the murderer had severed the victim’s hands and then killed him, the same is done to him; if he killed him with a stone, by drowning, or by any other means, he is dealt with in exactly the same way. Yet if the heir entitled to retribution prefers to limit himself to beheading the culprit with a sword, he may do so—and that is the better course. Should the murderer have used a forbidden method of killing, then beheading with the sword becomes obligatory; in present times, execution by a skilled marksman’s gunshot is considered equivalent to the sword.