Qisas

"eye for an eye", or retributive justice, in traditional Islamic law

Qisas or Qiṣāṣ (قِصَاص) is an Islamic term interpreted to mean "retaliation in kind", "eye for an eye", or retributive justice. Qisas and diyya are two of several forms of punishment in classical/traditional Islamic criminal jurisprudence, the others being Hudud and Ta'zir. The legal systems of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and the northern states of Nigeria currently apply qisas.

A legal concept similar to qisas is the principle of "eye for an eye" first recorded in the Code of Hammurabi.

The main verse for implementation in Islam is Al Baqara; 178 verse: "Believers! Retaliation is ordained for you regarding the people who were killed. Free versus free, captive versus captive, woman versus woman. Whoever is forgiven by the brother of the slain for a price, let him abide by the custom and pay the price well." In the tafsir (exogesis) of this verse, Mohammed Shafi' says: ' the one who has killed will be the one to be killed in Qisas قصاص It is not permissible to kill an innocent man or someone free for a killer, woman or slave. Let us hasten to clarify that the verse does not mean that Qisas قصاص will not be taken from a man who kills a woman or from a free man who kills a slave. In the very beginning of this verse the words الْقِصَاصُ فِي الْقَتْلَى: "The Qisas قصاص has been enjoined upon you in the case of those murdered" are a clear proof of this universality of application. There are other verses where this aspect has been stated more explicitly, for instance, in النَّفْسَ بِالنَّفْسِ (the person for the person).' Another view: a member of the tribe to which the murderer belonged was handed over to the victim's family for execution, equivalent to the social status of the murdered person. The element of "intention" is taken into account in only one of the accusations in the Quran (killing and in a single case (a believers killing another believer) and in return for this, a slave should be freed and to the family of the killed one, should be paid "unspecified" financial compensation (diyya). However, in the continuation of the verse, another condition for financial compensation is considered. According to this, it is claimed that the deceased person must live in the same community with the believers or the society in which the deceased lives must have an agreement with the believers. The two month fasting that the murderer will keep in case of financial inadequacy is considered sufficient as a reward for the crime (Surah Al Nisa; 176). On the other hand, the later jurists stipulates "the element of intent" in case of physical injury and killing acts as well as other conditions determined for bodily retaliation. The applicability of the punishment of qisas has been conditioned by the fiqhists on a large number of conditions, such as the innocence of the injured person or the victim. Injury which may be the subject of a qisas application may only be applied if there is a definite organ loss whose limits can be guaranteed that no more harm will be done to the offender than he has caused in the punishment. In this case, qisas cannot be made against the most common forms of killing and wounding that occur during ordinary daily fights using stone sticks, blades, and piercing tools. Because the qisas is the punishment of the offender exactly the same crime committed, for a person who is raped to death or beheaded, the plain death sentence to be given to the murderer does not mean that qisas has been fulfilled.

The Hadiths have extensive discussion of qisas. For example, Sahih Bukhari states,

Many premodern Islamic scholars ruled, based on hadith, that when the victim was a non Muslim dhimmi or a non Muslim slave owned by a Muslim, only diya (blood money) and not qisas should be available as compensation.

Since the 1960s, several northern states of Nigeria have enacted sharia based criminal laws, including provisions for qisas. These codes have been applied in the Sharia Courts of Nigeria to Muslims. Many have been sentenced to retaliation under the qisas principle, as well as to other punishments such as hudud and tazir.

Murder and manslaughter are private offenses in Saudi Arabia, which a victim or victim's heirs must prosecute, or accept monetary compensation, or grant pardon. This age limit is not effectively enforced, and the court can assess a child defendant's physical characteristics to decide if he or she should be tried as an adult. In most cases, a person who satisfies at least one of the following four characteristics is considered as an adult for qisas cases:

According to reports in Saudi media, in 2013, a court in Saudi Arabia sentenced a defendant to have his spinal cord severed to paralyze him, unless he paid one million Saudi riyals (about US$270,000) in Diyya compensation to the victim. The offender allegedly stabbed his friend in the back, rendering him paralysed from the waist down in or around 2003. Other reported sentences of qisas in KSA have included eye gouging, tooth extraction, and death in cases of murder.