“And when you killed a man and disputed over it, Allah was to bring to light what you were concealing.” [al-Baqara: 72]

“So We said, ‘Strike him with part of it.’ Thus does Allah bring the dead to life.” [al-Baqara: 73]

The story is well known: a man was killed by his nephew, who sought to inherit from him and accused the inhabitants of a village of killing him. Allah Most High commanded them to slaughter a cow and strike the slain man with part of it. When this was done, he said, “My nephew killed me.” This became a basis for accepting a slain person’s accusation and giving it legal weight in a murder claim.

A number of scholars, including the jurist Abū ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, have said that citing this verse as evidence amounts to gross heedlessness or sleight of hand. They argue that the man for whose sake the cow was slaughtered and who was struck with part of it was the subject of a miracle that cannot be obtained today and can occur only for a prophet or in a prophet’s presence. No qasāma oaths were sworn concerning the slain Israelite; rather, his truthfulness was established by the miracle.

This is incorrect; the verse remains valid evidence. The miracle lay only in Allah’s restoring him to life—exalted is He. As for the man’s statement, “My nephew, so-and-so, killed me,” there was nothing miraculous in it, since every living, sane human being free from impairment can speak and relate what he knows. Allah could have restored some other dead person to life, who would then have said, “So-and-so killed so-and-so.” There would then have been two miracles: his restoration to life and his disclosure of the unseen.

By singling this man out from among all the dead to be restored to life, Allah indicated that their law accepted the statement of someone who had been mortally wounded, was found alive, and identified his killer. Since he had died before he could be found alive, Allah restored him to life for His prophet, peace be upon him, so that this restoration might recover the opportunity to apply the ruling that had been lost. This was the reason he was singled out to be restored to life, and Allah knows best.

Likewise, the cow was singled out for slaughter because Allah wished to reward the man who had forgone a business transaction for fear of waking his father, compensating him many times over for the profit he had missed by refraining from waking him.

It is related from Ibn ‘Abbās that, concerning this cow, he said: Among the Children of Israel was a man exceptionally devoted to his father. A man carrying pearls for sale passed by him while his father was asleep with the key beneath his head. The merchant asked him, “Will you buy these pearls from me for seventy thousand?” He replied, “Stay here until my father wakes, and I will buy them from you for eighty thousand.” The other said, “Wake your father, and they are yours for sixty thousand.” The merchant continued lowering his price until he reached thirty thousand, while the son kept raising his offer, on condition that the merchant wait until his father awoke, until he reached one hundred thousand.

When the merchant pressed him too much, he said, “No, by Allah! I will never buy them from you at any price.” Out of devotion to his father, he refused to wake him. Allah compensated him for those pearls by granting him that cow.