and in another respect he resembles a man who is overpowered by necessity, like someone who tumbles from a height or whom a gust of wind carries from one spot to another.

Those who hold that both the commander and the subordinate must be executed excuse neither the ordered party on grounds of coercion nor the commander on grounds of non-direct involvement.

Those who rule that only the commander is to be put to death liken the subordinate to a mute instrument that has no will of its own.

Those who impose the ḥadd-penalty on the indirect party argue that the label “killer” applies to him only by metaphor.

In executing the coerced killer, the Mālikīs rely on the principle of “a life for a life,” invoking their consensus that even if a man is on the verge of death from starvation, he is not permitted to kill another human being and eat him.

As for a person who joins an intentional killer in homicide, the killing itself may be deliberate or accidental and the killer may be legally responsible (mukallaf) or not. We shall discuss deliberate murder when a group kills a single victim.

If an intentional killer joins with an accidental killer, or a mukallaf with a non-mukallaf—such as an adult with a child or a madman, or a free man with a slave in killing a slave (according to those who do not retaliate against a free man for a slave)—the scholars have disagreed.

Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī say that qiṣāṣ is taken from the intentional killer, while the accidental killer or the child owes half the blood-money (diya); Mālik places that sum on the ʿāqila, whereas al-Shāfiʿī draws it from the killer’s own property, as will be detailed later. They likewise maintain that if a free man and a slave intentionally kill a slave, the slave is executed and the free man must pay half the slave’s value; the same applies when a Muslim and a dhimmī kill together—they are both executed.

Abū Ḥanīfah, however, holds that when someone liable to retaliation collaborates with one who is not, retaliation is not taken from either; instead they are jointly liable for the diya.

The Hanafīs base this ruling on the presence of doubt: a homicide cannot be divided, and it is just as possible that the fatal act came from the party exempt from qiṣāṣ as from the one subject to it. The Messenger of God—peace and blessings be upon him—said, “Ward off the ḥadd-penalties in cases of doubt.” If the right to bloodshed is not established, its substitute, the diya, becomes obligatory.

The second group grounds its opinion in public interest, which calls for severity in safeguarding life; thus each participant is treated as though he alone committed the murder. This reasoning, however, is weak by the standards of analogy.

With regard to the act that makes retaliation obligatory, they agree that it is deliberate homicide, for they concur that killing is of two kinds: intentional and accidental. They differ only on whether there exists an intermediate category, called quasi-intentional (shibh al-ʿamd). The majority of jurists affirm it, whereas the well-known position of Mālik is to deny it except when a son kills his father—though another report from him allows it. Affirming this category were ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, ʿAlī, ʿUthmān, Zayd ibn Thābit, Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī, and al-Mughīra, with no Companion dissenting.

Those who uphold its existence distinguish between what indeed counts as quasi-intentional murder and what does not.