Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’ān; Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad (1980)

¹⁴⁷ After having pointed out that true piety does not consist in mere adherence to outward forms and rites, the Qurʾān opens, as it were, a new chapter relating to the problem of man’s behaviour. Just as piety cannot become effective without righteous action, individual righteousness cannot become really effective in the social sense unless there is agreement within the community as to the social rights and obligations of its members: in other words, as to the practical laws which should govern the behaviour of the individual within the society and the society’s attitude towards the individual and his actions. This is the innermost reason why legislation plays so great a role within the ideology of Islam, and why the Qurʾān consistently intertwines its moral and spiritual exhortation with ordinances relating to practical aspects of social life. Now one of the main problems facing any society is the safeguarding of the lives and the individual security of its members: and so it is understandable that laws relating to homicide and its punishment are dealt with prominently at this place. (It should be borne in mind that “The Cow” was the first sūrah revealed in Medina, that is, at the time when the Muslim community had just become established as an independent social entity.)
As for the term qiṣāṣ occurring at the beginning of the above passage, it must be pointed out that – according to all the classical commentators – it is almost synonymous with musāwāh, i.e., “making a thing equal [to another thing]”: in this instance, making the punishment equal (or appropriate) to the crime – a meaning which is best rendered as “just retribution” and not (as has been often, and erroneously, done) as “retaliation”. Seeing that the Qurʾān speaks here of “cases of killing” (fi ’l-qatlā, lit., “in the matter of the killed”) in general, and taking into account that this expression covers all possible cases of homicide – premeditated murder, murder under extreme provocation, culpable homicide, accidental manslaughter, and so forth – it is obvious that the taking of a life for a life (implied in the term “retaliation”) would not in every case correspond to the demands of equity. (This has been made clear, for instance, in 4:92, where legal restitution for unintentional homicide is dealt with.) Read in conjunction with the term “just retribution” which introduces this passage, it is clear that the stipulation “the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the woman for the woman” cannot – and has not been intended to - be taken in its literal, restrictive sense: for this would preclude its application to many cases of homicide, e.g., the killing of a free man by a slave, or of a woman by a man, or vice-versa. Thus, the above stipulation must be regarded as an example of the elliptical mode of expression (ījāz) so frequently employed in the Qurʾān, and can have but one meaning, namely: “if a free man has committed the crime, the free man must be punished; if a slave has commited the crime…”, etc. – in other words, whatever the status of the guilty person, he or she (and he or she alone) is to be punished in a manner appropriate to the crime.

¹⁴⁸ Lit., “and he to whom [something] is remitted by his brother”. There is no linguistic justification whatever for attributing – as some of the commentators have done – the pronoun “his” to the victim and, thus, for assuming that the expression “brother” stands for the victim’s “family” or “blood relations”. The pronoun “his” refers, unquestionably, to the guilty person; and since there is no reason for assuming that by “his brother” a real brother is meant, we cannot escape the conclusion that it denotes here “his brother in faith” of “his fellow-man” – in either of which terms the whole community is included. Thus, the expression “if something is remitted to a guilty person by his brother” (i.e., by the community or its legal organs) may refer either to the establishment of mitigating circumstances in a case of murder, or to the finding that the case under trial falls within the categories of culpable homicide or manslaughter —in which cases no capital punishment is to be exacted and restitution is to be made by the payment of an indemnity called diyyah (see 4:92) to the relatives of the victim. In consonance with the oft-recurring Qurʾanic exhortation to forgiveness and forbearance, the “remission” mentioned above may also (and especially in cases of accidental manslaughter) relate to a partial or even total waiving of any claim to indemnification.

¹⁴⁹ Lit., “and restitution to him in a goodly manner”, it being understood that the pronoun in ilayhi (“to him”) refers to the “brother in faith” or “fellow-man” mentioned earlier in this sentence. The word adāʾ (here translated as “restitution”) denotes an act of acquitting oneself of a duty or a debt (cf. Lane I, 38), and stands here for the act of legal reparation imposed on the guilty person. This reparation or restitution is to be made “in a goodly manner” – by taking into account the