personal motive. In that case, the decision concerning the killer’s life rests with the victim’s legal heirs: they may have him executed, pardon him, or accept blood money, because he killed for a personal purpose. Armed robbers, however, kill in order to seize people’s property, so their harm affects the public, like that of thieves. Their execution is therefore a prescribed punishment owed to Allah. This is agreed upon among the jurists. They have differed, however, over whether a person is to be executed for armed robbery even when the victim is not of equivalent legal status to the killer—for example, when the killer is free and the victim enslaved, or the killer is Muslim and the victim a non-Muslim under a covenant of protection or someone granted safe-conduct. The stronger view is that he is to be executed as a prescribed punishment because his killing spreads harm throughout society, just as he is subject to amputation for taking their property and imprisonment to enforce their rights.

When armed robbers form a group, and one of them personally commits the killing while the others assist and support him, one view holds that only the actual killer is executed. The majority, however, hold that all of them are executed, even if they number a hundred, and that those providing support and the actual killer are treated alike. This is what has been transmitted from the Rightly Guided Caliphs: ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb, may Allah be pleased with him, executed the lookout of a band of armed robbers. The lookout is the observer who sits in an elevated position to watch for anyone approaching them. Moreover, the actual killer was only able to commit the killing through the strength and assistance of those supporting him. When members of a group reinforce one another until they can resist being subdued, they share in both reward and punishment, as do those who fight in Allah’s cause. For the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,