Qisas and Forgiveness in the Qur’an: Proportionate Justice, Personal Responsibility, and Mercy

يٰأَيُّهَا الَّذينَ ءامَنوا كُتِبَ عَلَيكُمُ القِصاصُ فِى القَتلَى ۖ الحُرُّ بِالحُرِّ وَالعَبدُ بِالعَبدِ وَالأُنثىٰ بِالأُنثىٰ ۚ فَمَن عُفِىَ لَهُ مِن أَخيهِ شَىءٌ فَاتِّباعٌ بِالمَعروفِ وَأَداءٌ إِلَيهِ بِإِحسٰنٍ ۗ ذٰلِكَ تَخفيفٌ مِن رَبِّكُم وَرَحمَةٌ ۗ فَمَنِ اعتَدىٰ بَعدَ ذٰلِكَ فَلَهُ عَذابٌ أَليمٌ

Al-Baqarah 2:178

Believers, qisas (a proportionate legal response) has been prescribed for you in cases of those killed: the free for the free, the abd (a person in servitude or service) for the abd, and the female for the female. If something is pardoned to someone by his brother, pursuit must be fair and what is due must be discharged graciously. This is a relief from your Lord and a mercy. Whoever then transgresses will have a painful punishment.

Introduction: what does justice require?

A life has been taken. What does justice now require, and who has the right to forgive? Al-Baqarah 2:178 brings these questions together in a passage about qisas (a proportionate legal response to killing or injury). It raises difficult questions about the equal worth of human lives, individual responsibility, and the place of mercy. Perhaps placing such a passage before us is itself an invitation from God to think and question, rather than simply inherit an interpretation: which readings of His command accord with our moral awareness and with justice between human beings?

Before reaching a conclusion, we should face five questions directly.

1. What exactly is qisas? Does the command prescribe killing in return for killing, or the pursuit of a rightful and proportionate response to a crime? Why does the verse use this particular term instead of simply commanding that someone be killed?

2. Why does the verse say “the free for the free, the abd (a person in a relationship of servitude or service) for the abd, and the female for the female”? Does this assign different values to human lives according to sex and social position, or address a society in which such distinctions already shape justice? Freedom and servitude concern social standing and control over one’s actions; being female is a different kind of description. Why place them together, and how does the passage apply to women and men living under different legal and social conditions?

3. If responsibility is personal, why does the verse not speak directly of the killer and the killer’s responsibility? Could sex or social position alter a person’s responsibility for a death? How would such a reading fit the Qur’anic principle that no one bears another person’s burden of wrongdoing?

4. Is the Qur’an correcting an earlier legal order? Some laws in the Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Bible—distinguish between free and enslaved people in cases involving death. Yet Al-Ma'idah 5:45 recalls the rule “a life for a life.” What does Al-Baqarah 2:178 affirm, and what might it be correcting?

5. Why prescribe qisas and immediately open a path to pardon? The phrase “has been prescribed for you” establishes an obligation. Is the resulting claim a right that its holder may relinquish, or a punishment that must always be carried out? How do prescription and forgiveness belong together?

1. A proportionate response requires an account of what happened

Qisas cannot mean killing in return for killing in every occurrence. Its Arabic word family, represented by the consonants q-s-s, includes following a trail or pursuing something: Al-Kahf 18:64 describes retracing footsteps, and Al-Qasas 28:11 describes following someone to discover what happens to him. In legal contexts, the term concerns a response corresponding to the injury: Al-Ma'idah 5:45 uses it for wounds, and Al-Baqarah 2:194 places it within a discussion of proportionate response to aggression. Investigating the crime, identifying those responsible, establishing the circumstances, and determining a just response are therefore necessary to its proper application. A death sentence may be one outcome where intentional unlawful killing has been established and the relevant conditions are met. The occurrence of a death does not, by itself, authorize another killing.

Several familiar situations show why these distinctions matter.

First, was the killing intentional? Someone may cause a death without intending to kill. Should that person receive the same punishment as someone who deliberately takes a life? The Qur’an gives a specific ruling for accidental killing in An-Nisa 4:92 and addresses the intentional killing of a believer with a separate, severe warning in An-Nisa 4:93. Establishing that a death occurred is only the beginning of determining responsibility.

Second, was the person who caused the death acting wrongfully? Suppose an attacker threatens your life or personal safety and dies while you defend yourself. Does causing that death automatically make you a murderer deserving an equivalent punishment? Surely it matters who began the attack, what danger existed, and whether lethal force was necessary to stop it. These facts must be established before the act can be judged.

Third, who is responsible when a killing is ordered by someone else? A soldier kills on a commander’s instructions. Does responsibility end with the soldier, or extend to the person who gave the order? An officer carries out a judicial execution, and the condemned person is later found to have been innocent. Whose actions caused the wrongful death: those of the officer, the judge, or the people who supplied the evidence? Did the court make an unintentional error, or did someone knowingly fabricate evidence to secure an innocent person’s death? Each possibility changes what must be investigated and how responsibility should be assigned.

Fourth, what if an enslaved person kills on an owner’s command? Is it enough to examine the enslaved person’s act alone? The owner’s power, threats, coercion, and the subordinate’s actual capacity to refuse also matter. A person under another’s control may have little practical ability to resist. It cannot simply be assumed that the person compelled to act and the person freely giving the order bear identical responsibility in every case.

Fifth, how did the circumstances of the people involved affect what happened? The victim and the person who caused the death may differ greatly in physical strength, resources, legal independence, and social influence. One may have exercised control over the other or exploited a vulnerability. None of these differences changes the worth of a human life. They may, however, be crucial to understanding the crime, the freedom of those involved to choose their actions, and their respective responsibility.

Justice cannot be established by the bare formula “one death for another.” Before determining a proportionate response, we need to know what happened, what was intended, how freely each person acted, and what each contributed. Someone may have directly caused the death while the principal responsibility lies with the person who ordered it. Or a death may have occurred without the person who caused it having committed intentional unlawful killing.

An order from a superior does not automatically excuse the person who carries it out, either. In Al-Qasas 28:8, Pharaoh, Haman, and their forces are all described as wrongdoers. In Al-Ahzab 33:67 and Al-Ahzab 33:68, following powerful leaders does not release their followers from responsibility for everything they have done. Conversely, An-Nahl 16:106 distinguishes coercion from voluntary conduct in its discussion of a compelled profession of disbelief. These passages make the role of choice and obedience worth examining; they do not allow us to declare an executor either fully responsible or wholly innocent without investigation. Each person’s part must be established separately.

The legal meaning of qisas should thus be understood in relation to the pursuit of a rightful, proportionate response. Its word family supplies the idea of following; its legal use emphasizes correspondence and limits. These points should remain distinct. A word’s root does not, on its own, define an entire process of investigation and judgment. Yet qisas cannot be applied justly without establishing the facts and determining responsibility.

Justice requires the proportionate response to reach those actually responsible for the crime. It is not satisfied merely because one person is killed after another has died.

2. Freedom, servitude, and sex: different lives or different circumstances?

Why does the verse name the free, the person in servitude, and the female? Is it establishing a hierarchy in the value of life and a corresponding hierarchy of punishment? Or can the wording direct attention to people’s actual circumstances, their control over their actions, and their responsibility?

Consider first hurr (free, as opposed to being in servitude). Although the form used in the verse is grammatically masculine, freedom as a condition is not exclusive to men: a woman can also be free. The descriptions therefore overlap. We should not assume that the verse divides all human beings into three mutually exclusive groups—free men, slaves, and women—as though women could have no place in the first two categories.

The second term is abd (a person in a relationship of servitude or service). Its word family, represented by the Arabic consonants ʿ-b-d, encompasses devotion, worship, service, and obedience. A person can be God’s servant without being owned by another human being. Jesus, for example, describes himself as God’s servant in Maryam 19:30. The word family’s range cannot therefore be restricted at the outset to human slavery.

This breadth is demonstrated in the Qur’an itself. In Al-Kahf 18:65, the person from whom Moses asks to learn is called “a servant from among Our servants”; the passage does not identify a human owner of this person. Jesus is God’s servant in Maryam 19:30, while the angels are called servants of the Merciful in Az-Zukhruf 43:19. Being bought as property or captured in war is therefore not a fixed component of the meaning of abd throughout the Qur’an.

The same word family can also describe domination over a population. In Ash-Shu'ara 26:22, Moses confronts Pharaoh with his subjugation of the Children of Israel. The passage brings imposed servitude and control into view; the meaning cannot be exhausted by the image of buying or selling an individual. Examining dependence, freedom of action, and the power to command is consequently relevant to the word family explored here. Service to God and subjection to a human ruler must nevertheless remain distinct relationships. Sharing a word family does not make them identical.

The Qur’an also uses a more explicit expression for possession: ma malakat aymanukum (literally, “what your right hands possess,” referring in contexts involving people to those held in possession and under one’s authority). The expression places possession in the foreground. In An-Nahl 16:75, abd is accompanied by mamluk (owned or possessed). These differences matter when examining the range of a word and the particular relationship being described.

An enslaved person is therefore one instance within the range of abd, not the whole of that range. The broader reading explored here considers a person who serves another and whose independent decision-making is absent or constrained. The relevant connection is service, dependence, and acting under someone else’s will. This does not make every such person’s legal status the same; it draws attention to a relationship that can take different forms.

These relationships also exist in our own time. People in North Korea have schools and state education, but are they free to seek independent knowledge and information? Can they travel abroad without government permission? Can they freely choose how to live and oppose the ruler’s commands? Does the will of Kim Jong Un and the governing apparatus not become an obligation imposed upon them? To recognize servitude, we need not look only for people bought as property or captured in war. When a power controls a person’s work, movement, and fundamental life choices, and denies them the ability to refuse or leave, calling that person a “citizen” does not establish that they are free. The breadth of abd (a person in a relationship of servitude or service) invites us to recognize this relationship of domination and constrained choice as well.

A soldier serving under a commander, an officer obliged to enforce a court’s decision, an enslaved person under an owner’s control, and even a hired killer carrying out another person’s instructions all raise questions about service, obedience, and dependence on another’s will. Their knowledge, freedom to refuse, and exposure to coercion are plainly not identical. Those differences are precisely what an inquiry into responsibility must examine.

Suppose a soldier bombs a city on a general’s orders, killing innocent people. Does responsibility rest entirely with the person who carried out the attack? What responsibility belongs to the general who ordered the killing? Looking only at the last person in the chain of action may leave the power that directed it unexamined.

Or return to the officer who executes a person under a court order, only for that person’s innocence to become clear later. Was the officer solely responsible for the death? Did the judge and court officials make an unintentional mistake in assessing the evidence? Or did someone deliberately manufacture the evidence and cause an innocent person to be killed? These are different accounts of responsibility, even though the visible final act may look the same.

The question also arises when an enslaved person kills at an owner’s command. Identifying only the enslaved person as responsible would leave the owner’s role, power to issue orders, use of threats, and control over the other person’s choices unexplored.

In each case, identifying who physically performed the killing does not complete the work of justice. We must establish who ordered it, who carried it out, what each knew, how freely each acted, and what each contributed to the crime.

Why, then, does the verse also mention the female separately?

Women’s actual social and legal circumstances belong in this discussion. In many patriarchal societies, women have lacked economic independence, effective means of defending their rights, and opportunities equal to those of men. At times they have themselves been treated as transferable property.

The Qur’an exposes such wrongs. In At-Takwir 81:8 and At-Takwir 81:9, the girl buried alive is asked for what offense she was killed. In An-Nahl 16:58 and An-Nahl 16:59, it condemns the shame and dismay with which some people receive news of a daughter’s birth. In An-Nisa 4:19, it prohibits taking women as an inheritance against their will. These passages show that women’s vulnerability and mistreatment were real concerns in the society the Qur’an addressed.

These patterns are not confined to the distant past. In some communities, families arrange reciprocal marriages between their daughters and sons, and mistreatment of one daughter may prompt retaliatory mistreatment of the other family’s daughter. In the practice known as baad (giving a woman or girl in marriage to settle a dispute or compensate for a male relative’s offense), a woman is made to bear the consequences of someone else’s conduct. Women may also lack equal opportunities to defend their rights in social life and before courts.

Such discrimination is unjust. Denying that it exists, however, does nothing to change the circumstances in which people live.

Assessing responsibility therefore requires attention to people’s real independence, their power to make decisions, and their ability to protect themselves. Two people are equal in human dignity and in the worth of their lives without necessarily having equal control over what happens. Justice requires each person’s responsibility to be assessed according to their actual role, intention, knowledge, freedom of action, and circumstances.

Being a woman does not automatically increase or reduce responsibility. A woman who knowingly and freely commits a crime is responsible for it, just as a man subjected to genuine coercion must be judged with attention to that coercion. Sex itself is not being proposed as a scale of human worth or punishment. The question is what the individual’s circumstances were when the crime occurred.

This opens another way of considering “the free for the free, the abd for the abd, and the female for the female.” The reading developed here asks how differences in legal and social position affect freedom of action and responsibility, rather than treating a free person’s life as more valuable than an enslaved person’s, or a man’s as more valuable than a woman’s. On this reading, the overlapping descriptions direct attention to actual positions of power and vulnerability, rather than creating three separate classes of unequal human worth.

Equal worth does not mean identical circumstances or identical responsibility in every event. Justice is not achieved by imposing the same punishment on everyone identified as the direct cause of a death without investigating what happened. It requires establishing each person’s role and responsibility, so that no one is held responsible beyond their own knowing and voluntary contribution.

This reading shifts the question from the relative worth of free people, those in servitude, and women to their circumstances and actual responsibility. That is also the central concern of a just investigation and a proportionate response to a crime.

3. Why address the community rather than simply name the killer?

The principle of personal responsibility must operate within society, where tribal loyalties, influential patrons, and patriarchal power can affect people’s rights. In a setting without independent investigative and judicial institutions in their modern form, a person’s social standing and relationship to powerful people could profoundly affect how a death was investigated and who was held responsible. The reading proposed here understands the verse as confronting those conditions in the pursuit of justice.

The verse addresses the community of believers and prescribes qisas “in cases of those killed.” Its concern extends beyond the fact that one individual caused another’s death. The community also has responsibilities when someone is killed, when a rightful claim is suppressed, or when retaliation threatens to spread.

As the first section showed, qisas cannot simply be reduced to killing in return for killing. Investigating a crime requires establishing the truth, identifying those involved, and determining their actual responsibility. The second section explored why independence, service under another’s command, and unequal legal or social circumstances can matter to that determination.

Personal responsibility does not mean that the person who physically performs the killing must always bear the whole burden alone. Whoever orders it, coerces another person, or knowingly makes the crime possible must answer for their own conduct. Conversely, someone acting under compulsion and without genuine freedom to choose cannot simply be equated with someone who freely and deliberately decides to commit the crime. The circumstances require investigation.

The principle in Al-An'am 6:164—that no one bears another person’s burden—reinforces this need to distinguish individual responsibility. A person must be judged by their own conduct, knowledge, choices, and contribution to the crime, rather than merely by sex or social position. Obedience to someone else, by itself, does not erase responsibility for a person’s knowing actions.

Justice does not require pretending that everyone’s circumstances are identical. It requires equal standing in the pursuit of justice and an assessment of each person’s responsibility grounded in what that person actually did.

4. Is an earlier legal order being corrected?

In the Torah, Exodus 21:20, Exodus 21:21, Exodus 21:28, Exodus 21:29, Exodus 21:30, Exodus 21:31, and Exodus 21:32 illustrate legal distinctions between free and enslaved people in cases involving death. The Qur’an, however, recalls “a life for a life” among the Torah’s provisions in Al-Ma'idah 5:45, and the same verse also speaks of relinquishing a claim in charity.

In Al-Ma'idah 5:48, the Qur’an presents itself as confirming earlier scripture and standing as a guardian over it. Comparing these legal distinctions in light of the Qur’an is therefore relevant. It does not follow, without further evidence, that every phrase of Al-Baqarah 2:178 was revealed to amend a particular provision in the Torah.

The possibility of reform can be explored through the understanding of qisas developed here: a just response to a crime, an inquiry into actual responsibility, and limits on punishment, rather than a scale that assigns different values to human lives according to sex or social rank. As the earlier sections argued, justice requires examining the circumstances, choices, and actual role of each person, rather than deciding the case by social category alone.

On this reading, what is corrected is the conversion of differences in power and social position into differences in the value of life and the treatment of offenders. The verse itself does not explicitly identify a particular Torah provision as its target. The connection arises from comparing the texts and considering them alongside the Qur’an’s principles of justice.

5. How can a prescribed response leave room for pardon?

This is a legitimate question. Its answer begins with the fact that the Qur’an places the prescribed response and the possibility of pardon within the same passage. The apparent contradiction can arise when qisas is understood exclusively as executing a killer: God then appears to command a death and immediately withdraw the command. That interpretation has already narrowed the term before considering the whole verse.

As discussed earlier, a proportionate response depends on establishing the crime, its circumstances, and the responsibility of those involved. When someone dies, we need to determine who is responsible, how the death occurred, whether it was intentional or accidental, and what contributed to it. Once the facts and the rightful claim are clear, the question of punishment or pardon can be addressed.

The Arabic expression kutiba alaykum (has been prescribed for you) establishes a binding requirement. But prescribing qisas is not the same as requiring a death sentence in every case. Fasting is introduced with the same expression in Al-Baqarah 2:183; Al-Baqarah 2:184 and Al-Baqarah 2:185 then provide accommodations for illness and travel. A prescribed obligation can coexist with relief and provisions that take people’s circumstances into account.

Pardon is compatible with recognizing a right to seek justice: the holder of that right may relinquish the prescribed response. The victim’s family may seek the prescribed punishment or choose to forgo its claim. Forgiveness does not deny that a crime occurred or that the victim had rights. It is a conscious relinquishment of a recognized claim.

Such a decision may help end hostility, give the offender an opportunity for remorse and reform, and bring some peace to those who forgive. An agreement may also provide the victim’s family with financial compensation. Yet pardon should not be reduced to a financial transaction. Its value also lies in opening a path toward mercy, reconciliation, and repair.

That is why the verse can prescribe qisas, open the possibility of pardon, and describe this relief as mercy. The prescribed response ensures that the crime is not ignored and the victim’s claim is not lost. Pardon makes room for a conscious decision to forgo that response and bring the conflict to an end.

Qisas and pardon can thus belong to a single pursuit of justice: establish what happened and recognize the rightful claim, then allow for either the prescribed response or a deliberate decision to relinquish it.

6. Afw: forgiveness and the relinquishment of a claim

Afw (pardon or relinquishment of a claim) belongs to the Arabic word family represented by ʿ-f-w. Its lexical uses include the fading or removal of a trace, overlooking a wrong, and refraining from holding someone to account or imposing punishment. The same family can describe wind erasing tracks. That image can illuminate forgiveness, but it must not become a demand that the crime disappear from the record or that the injured person forget the pain. The wrong may remain an acknowledged fact, and the victim’s right may remain recognized, while the holder of that right gives up all or part of a claim.

The Qur’an does not use this word family only for forgiving sin. In Al-Baqarah 2:237 it appears in the context of financial entitlements arising from marriage and the relinquishment of a claim. Giving up a claim does not mean there was never a right to make it. In Al-Imran 3:134, restraining anger and pardoning people are mentioned alongside one another. Controlling an angry reaction and forgoing accountability are related, but they are not the same act.

The word family has other branches of meaning, too. In Al-A'raf 7:95, afaw (they increased or flourished) occurs in a passage about prosperity following hardship. In Al-Baqarah 2:219, al-afw (what is surplus or available beyond need, in this context) answers a question about what to spend in giving. These uses show why a root should not receive one unchanging English equivalent in every sentence. In the passage on qisas, the setting of entitlement, pardon, pursuit, and payment determines the relevant sense.

In Al-Baqarah 2:178, the wording speaks of “something” being pardoned. Pardon should not therefore be assumed to cancel every right and obligation automatically. The next words call for fair pursuit and gracious discharge of what is due. Relinquishing retaliation can leave an obligation to compensate, while more extensive forgiveness is also conceivable. The text makes clear that pardon does not release either party from fair dealing and respect for the other’s rights.

Pardon does not deny the wrong or devalue the injured person’s claim. It relinquishes all or part of a claim whose legitimacy has been recognized. It can therefore reduce the severity of the response without rewriting what happened or necessarily extinguishing every obligation.

7. Why does the Qur’an speak of life in qisas?

The boundary becomes clearer in Al-Isra 17:33. After prohibiting unlawful killing and recognizing the authority of the representative of someone wrongfully killed, the verse forbids excess in killing. A right to seek justice is not an unlimited license for revenge. Reading this alongside the principle of personal responsibility in Al-An'am 6:164 supports the conclusion that kinship, ethnicity, or group membership alone cannot make someone answerable for another person’s killing. Creating a new victim cannot restore the first victim’s right.

The connection with life also invites a question about the social consequences of responding to a crime. Does the response protect people, establish responsibility, and restrain aggression? Or does it carry the conflict beyond the offender into families and future generations? Justice is distinguished from blind revenge by respecting limits both in identifying who is responsible and in determining the response.

8. Forgiveness and repair without coercing the injured

In Ash-Shura 42:41, those who defend themselves after being wronged are not blamed. In Ash-Shura 42:42, blame is directed toward those who oppress people and act unjustly in the land. In Ash-Shura 42:43, patience and forgiveness are described as matters requiring resolve. This sequence matters: praising forgiveness does not abolish the right to seek justice or transfer responsibility for oppression from the oppressor to the injured person.

A victim’s family should therefore not be pushed into forgiveness through religious condemnation or social pressure. The value of pardon lies in consciously relinquishing a right. Equally, an offender who receives pardon cannot treat it as proof of innocence or permission to repeat the crime. Forgiveness opens a path to reform; responsibility for subsequent conduct remains.

Conclusion: justice with room for mercy

The reading developed in this study understands Al-Baqarah 2:178 as protecting life from indiscriminate revenge and judgments based on sex, power, or social standing. Prescribing qisas recognizes a right to pursue a just response to a crime. Exercising that right properly requires examining intention and choice, identifying the roles of those who act and those who command, and respecting the rightful claimant. On this reading, the reference to the free, the person in servitude, and the female draws attention to differences in legal circumstances, social power, and freedom of action, rather than establishing unequal values for human lives. No one should bear someone else’s wrongdoing, and no one’s status should exempt them from answering for their own.

The passage does not end with establishing the crime and the claim. Its reference to something being pardoned “by his brother” opens a possibility beyond lasting enmity. The next instruction requires fair pursuit and gracious fulfillment. If an entitlement remains to be claimed or an obligation to be discharged, both parties must act well. The Arabic ittiba (following or pursuing) comes from the word family t-b-ʿ, distinct from the q-s-s family behind qisas; here it concerns the fair pursuit of what remains due after pardon. This may involve financial compensation, but ma‘ruf (recognized right and fair conduct) and ihsan (doing good and acting graciously) should not be reduced to collecting and paying money. Pardon should create an opportunity to end hostility, respect one another’s rights, and repair relations.

God calls this opening to pardon a relief and a mercy. Mercy does not authorize further aggression. The warning at the end of the verse—“Whoever then transgresses will have a painful punishment”—reminds both parties that they may not go beyond the bounds of justice. Someone who has pardoned must not revive the blood feud, and someone who has been pardoned must not exploit that generosity to commit another wrong.

Qisas protects the injured person’s claim; pardon leaves room for mercy, reconciliation, and repair once that claim has been recognized. In this passage, justice and forgiveness can work together.