whereas any blow delivered for the sake of discipline or in jest is treated like an accidental killing. Mālik recognized no third, “quasi-intentional” category; for him homicide is either deliberate or accidental, nothing in between.
He further said: Whoever strikes another intentionally and the victim dies in his presence is subject to retaliation. If the assailant strikes him during a sudden flare-up, leaves while the victim is still alive, and the victim later dies of that blow, the procedure of qasāma (the oath-procedure) is applied, provided the death can be traced to the assailant.
Whoever kills a free Muslim—young or old, male or female—incurs retaliation and is to be put to death in the very manner he used on the victim, whether by slaughtering, strangling, beating, burning with fire, drowning, crushing the head with a stone, or anything similar. That method is repeated on him until he dies, so long as it does not entail prolonged torture; if it would, he is executed instead with the sword.
No retaliation is taken from a minor or an insane person; it is due only against an adult of sound mind. A drunkard, however, is liable to retaliation.
When a Muslim kills a slave or a dhimmī he is disciplined and imprisoned, unless he has killed either of them by ghīla (treacherous murder); in that case he is executed for him.
Retaliation between women is the same as between men, and likewise between women and men when they are equal in freedom and faith.
There is no retaliation between a dhimmī and a Muslim, nor between a free person and a slave, for wounds or for life—except that if a dhimmī kills a free Muslim he is put to death; similarly, if an unbeliever kills a believer he is executed.
If a slave kills a free man, the heirs of the victim may choose: they may execute him, or they may spare him. If they spare him, his master then has the choice either to ransom him by paying the victim’s blood money, or to hand him over so that the slave becomes the property of the victim’s heirs.
If a slave severs the hand of a free person there are two views, both related from Mālik: one holds that retaliation is taken from him, and the other that it is not.