TRANSLATION
It is inconceivable that a person of faith [in God] will kill another person of faith [in God], except by mistake. Such a slayer will free a believing slave and pay indemnity to the family of the slain, unless the family forgoes such as an act of charity. If the slain person is from a hostile tribe and is a believer, then freeing a believing slave would suffice. But if he or she is from a tribe with whom there is a covenant, then both freeing a believing slave and paying of indemnity to his people [from that tribe] are due. If he or she does not have the resources, then he or she should fast for two consecutive months instead. This is a prescribed repentance from God. God is All-Knowing and Wise.264
Whoever kills a believer deliberately, his or her destination is Hell, where he or she will reside. God will condemn him or her, reject him or her, and subject him or her to a grave suffering. O People of Faith: when you go out to fight, be discerning of one who offers you a greeting of peace [e.g., salam] and do not say, “You are not a believer,” to gain some goods of this world. With God is more abundant gain, and recognize that you, too, were in a state of disbelief until God granted you the benefit [of faith]. Therefore, be discerning on such matters, and know that God is Ever Aware of all that you do.265
INTERPRETATION
264. The penalty and repentance for unintended manslaughter (in this case, that of a person of faith in God) is to set free a person in bondage (slavery in the context when the Qur’an was revealed) and to compensate the family for the loss of their family member. In today’s context, slavery is not relevant, but various forms of human bondage (poverty, debt-ridden situations, domestic servitude, sex slavery, etc.) continue to exist. The challenge should be to find comparable mechanisms to benefit a human being for the unintended loss of another human being and to ensure that the family suffering such a loss is adequately compensated. In the current penal system in many countries, Muslim or non-Muslim, the criminal justice system takes over the situation, and the pursuit is sometimes geared toward causing more harm to the slain person’s family and the slayer without any focus to benefit the society from such an unintended event. It becomes a war of words and cleverness between the two lawyers as to who can outwit the other, instead of working to bring justice and benefit to both parties. The one-dimensional form of punishment of a prison sentence does no good to the family and the individual; instead, the system puts a collective burden on society to feed and take care of such an offending person. Our collective challenge should be to review aspects of our current legal system and use the Qur’anic foundation of wisdom, forgiveness, and relentless pursuit to improve the human condition to redefine our criminal justice system, methods, and processes.
265. The forcefulness with which God expresses His disapproval of killing a faithful person without justice by another person of faith or no faith is in stark contrast to what is going on in our world today, where people are being killed in record numbers. The killing of human beings is being glamorized in movies as entertainment, and the video footage of the “shock and awe” of the Bush Administration (war under the false pretext of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq) are presented to justify killing human beings, while both parties are claiming to worship the same God. The prevalence of suicide bombings, political killings, gang violences, and flexing of military muscles by the powerful countries in our time goes in direct opposition to God’s distaste for such killing as expressed in the Qur’an, in the Bible and in the Ten Commandments that Jews, Christians, and Muslims subscribe to.
REFLECTION
The adoption of the Qur’anic legal system and principles for justice, peace, and human dignity has benefited the Muslim civilization and the world at large to a degree that is unheard of in human history. The widespread adoption of such a system and thinking by Western leaders, scholars, and intellectuals has led to a system of government and legal codes that is the envy of the world. The system has been failing, though, as evidenced by widespread violence against human beings, unjust wars, rising income disparity, wanton abuse of our environment, and the rise of the ultrarich and ultraconservatives to rule over our societies in many parts of the world, including countries that practice or aspire to democracy. Muslims, in particular, have reverted to an archaic system of law and justice that has lost the spirit of the Qur’an and the Prophet and are caught in the hopeless debate over adoption of Western law or the so-called Sharia law without striving to develop better—contemporary and contextual—understanding of what the Qur’an and the Prophet aspire and require us to do and how we can be truly faithful to the innate human nature that God created us with.
ACTION
This is a serious challenge that intellectual people of all faiths—Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others—need to take up for the sake of our collective survival and dignity. We need to ask serious questions about how we run our democracy or alternative system of government, how laws are made and applied, and to what extent we are paying attention to the guidance from God in the scriptures by analyzing and applying them in the true spirit of a worthy creation of God.