Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Abrogation of "eye-for-an-eye"

The following verse in the Quran describes eye-for-an-eye.  Eye-for-an-eye was a Jewish legal concept that loosely translates to "If I kill your slave then you kill my slave.  Or I kill your wife you kill my wife."  It was a way of limiting the exacting of revenge.  It was practiced in Arabia too apparently.

It could apparently be alleviated in the Quran, by the payment of blood money:

"O you who believe! Al-Qisas (the Law of Equality in punishment) is prescribed for you in case of murder: the free for the free, the slave for the slave, and the female for the female. But if the killer is forgiven by the brother (or the relatives, etc.) of the killed against blood money, then adhering to it with fairness and payment of the blood money, to the heir should be made in fairness. This is an alleviation and a mercy from your Lord. So after this whoever transgresses the limits (i.e. kills the killer after taking the blood money), he shall have a painful torment."

Sura 2:178, Muhsin Khan and Taqi-ud-Din al-Hilali 

Is this a form of forgiveness?  It is not.  It is paying people off.  Jesus in the Bible expressed forgiveness when he told the woman caught in adultery to "go and sin no more".  

No comments:

Post a Comment