A Life for a Life

The third of the abwāb al-birr is, in substance, that the Islamic Sharīʿah rests upon justice. One important aspect of it begins a few verses further on, at verse 178:

A life is to be taken for a life: that is the command given to you. It is an Islamic principle, drawn already from what is mentioned later in another sūrah:

The sense of it is that when a murderer takes a life, his own blood becomes lawful; he has forfeited his inviolability. Yet there is also provision for those who would forgive: fa-man ʿufiya lahu min akhīhi shayʾun fa-ittibāʿun bi-l-maʿrūfi wa-adāʾun ilayhi bi-iḥsān. And then:

All of this sets out the reasoning behind allowing one who has murdered another to be put to death: it is a powerful deterrent. Hence Allah says that in this there is life for you. One kills a man, and there is life in it? The sense is that it is held to be a strong deterrent, and a man will think twice.

There are two views of this in the world. Some places retain the death penalty; others oppose it vehemently. Those others find themselves helpless, their hands tied, in the face of rising numbers of murders and rapes and the rest, yet unwilling to bring in capital punishment. And even within the West the matter is not settled: in many states of America there is a death penalty, its benefit and its wisdom being recognised there, and so they apply it. Elsewhere men throw up their hands, at a loss what to do about the volume of crime; yet if anyone raises this idea, they regard it as barbaric.

From the Islamic point of view it stands in the Qur'an, with its legislation and its reasoning: wa-lakum fī al-qiṣāṣi ḥayāh — for you, in this qiṣāṣ, in this life for a life, there is life. Allah (swt) says nonetheless that whoever forgives, and takes a ransom instead, does well in that also. There are thus two courses open. It is not as in earlier faiths, such as that of the Jews, where retribution had to be exacted: here one may forgive, and one may take a ransom instead.