Section on the Qur’anic verses dealing with the prescribed penalties
1 – “O you who believe! Retaliatory retribution (qiṣāṣ) in cases of killing has been ordained for you: the free for the free…” (Qur’an 2:178) to the end of the verse.

• Allah reminds His servants of His favor in having made qiṣāṣ obligatory in homicide—that is, exact equivalence, so that the deliberate killer is put to death in the same manner in which he killed his victim—thereby establishing justice among His creatures.

• Because the verse addresses all believers, it proves that every one of them—including the killer’s own relatives, and even the killer himself—is required to assist the guardian of the slain when he seeks retaliation, to hand the murderer over to him, and not to bar the guardian from reaching the killer once the legal conditions are met. Doing otherwise resembles the conduct of the people of the Age of Ignorance and those who imitate them by harboring offenders.

• Allah then specified the rule, saying: “the free for the free” (Qur’an 2:178). Together with the statement “a life for a life” (Qur’an 5:45), this makes it clear that a male may be executed for killing a female just as a female may be executed for killing a male. This explicit text overrides the inferred restriction that might be drawn from the phrase “the female for the female” (Qur’an 2:178), and it is reinforced by the sound ḥadith in which the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, executed a Jewish man for killing a slave-girl.

• Excluded from this general ruling are the parents, however high their lineage ascends: they are not to be executed for killing their child. This is established by the sunnah, and the very wording of qiṣāṣ itself indicates that it would not be just to execute a parent for his or her child. Moreover, the innate mercy that fills the parents’ hearts ordinarily restrains them from committing such a crime against their own offspring.