Sībawayh said: “The meaning is: You, O Muhammad, and those who disbelieve are like a caller and the animals he calls to.”

According to his interpretation, the meaning is thus: The disbelievers and the one calling them are like sheep and the shepherd calling to them.

You may understand this either as a composite simile or as a point-by-point simile.

If you take it as a composite simile, it compares the disbelievers—in their failure to understand or benefit—to sheep called to by a shepherd: they understand nothing of his words beyond the bare sound, consisting of calls and cries.

If you take it as a point-by-point simile, the disbelievers correspond to the livestock; their caller’s summons to the path and to guidance corresponds to the livestock being called to; their being called to guidance corresponds to the calling itself; and their perception of nothing beyond calls and cries corresponds to the livestock’s perception of nothing beyond the caller’s voice.

[Surah al-Baqarah (2): verse 179]

“In prescribed retribution there is life for you, O people of understanding, so that you may fear Allah.” (179)

Implicit in this address is an answer to a question that might arise: Destroying this noble human frame, inflicting pain upon this soul and taking its life, without reversing the loss of the murdered person’s life, compounds the harm of killing. What wisdom, then, underlies this prescription from the One whose mercy encompasses all things and whose wisdom astounds the intellect? The address contains the answer in His words:

“In prescribed retribution there is life for you.”

For when a would-be murderer considers that he may be put to death in retribution for the person he kills, he refrains from killing and is deterred, choosing instead to preserve his own life. Thus, it preserves both his life and the life of the person he intended to kill.

There is another aspect: when a man from their clan or tribe was killed,