financial compensation; for this is closer to justice than inflicting additional injury on the person against whom retaliation is exacted. This is the argument of those jurists who hold that retaliatory execution may only be carried out by a sword-stroke to the neck. They argue: “When killing is carried out by something other than a sword, or at a place other than the neck, we cannot ascertain equivalence. Indeed, burning, drowning, cutting in two, and similar methods may cause greater pain.”

Yet the view of those who say, “He is to be subjected to the same treatment he inflicted,” is closer to justice. By striving to make the two acts equivalent, a person has achieved as much justice as he is capable of; any disparity in pain lies beyond his control. But if someone cuts off his victim’s hands and feet and then cuts him in two, and this is answered by beheading him with a sword; or if he crushes his victim’s head between two stones but is himself executed with a sword, then we know with certainty that there is neither parity nor equivalence. We would thus have done something that we know cannot achieve equivalence, and with which equivalence is impossible. This is unlike the first approach, in which equivalence may be achieved, since a disparity is not certain.

Likewise, some jurists have set aside equivalent retaliation for a blow, a slap, and similar acts in favour of discretionary punishment, on the grounds that equivalence cannot be achieved in such cases. The position of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and other Companions, however, which Ahmad also expressly affirmed, is what the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, establishes: that equivalent retaliation applies to such acts, because this comes closer to justice and equivalence. For if we endeavour to subject him to the same kind of act as he committed, and to approximate