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The Categories of Killing

Killing falls into three categories:

First: neither the blow nor the killing is intentional.

Second: the blow is intentional, but the killing is not.

Third: the killing is intentional.

When neither the killing nor the blow is intentional—for example, someone shoots at something but hits and kills a person, or kills a Muslim while fighting the enemy, believing him to be a disbeliever, and similar cases—this is accidental killing by consensus. It does not incur retaliation. Rather, blood money is payable by the ʿāqilah (those collectively liable for blood money), while expiation is at the killer’s own expense. Allah, mighty and majestic, says:

“It is not for a believer to kill a believer except by mistake. Whoever kills a believer by mistake must free a believing slave and pay blood money to his family, unless they waive it as charity.” [al-Nisā’: 92]

His words, Most High, “except by mistake” [al-Nisā’: 92], mean “but [it may happen] by mistake.” This is a discontinuous exception: what is excepted is separate from, and does not belong to the same category as, that from which it is excepted. For an accidental act cannot be described as something one is permitted or forbidden to do.

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The second category, in which the blow is intentional but the killing is not, necessarily takes one of three forms:

First: the blow is delivered in play.

Second: it is administered as discipline by someone entitled to administer it.

Third: it is delivered out of hostility and anger.

Regarding the first form, where the blow is delivered in play, there are three opinions:

First: this constitutes accidental killing, for which blood money is payable by the ʿāqilah. This is Ibn al-Qāsim’s position and what he reports from Mālik in al-Mudawwanah.