Qisas

Qisas or Qiṣāṣ (Arabic: قِصَاص, romanized: Qiṣāṣ, lit. 'accountability, following up after, pursuing or prosecuting') is an Islamic term interpreted to mean "retaliation in kind", "eye for an eye", or retributive justice. Qisas (along with its alternative punishment blood money, aka Diyya, compensation paid by the offender, which is applied in cases where retaliation conditions are not met) is one of several forms of punishment in classical/traditional Islamic criminal jurisprudence, the others being Hudud and Ta'zir.

According to James Lindgren it is standard wisdom among legal historians that collective responsibility in ancient law has given way to individual responsibility in modern law. In ancient societies, the person perpetrating a crime or the family or tribe to which they belonged was commonly punished following the principle, "Life for life, eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal."

Qisas has been called a "refinement" of practices described in the Bible and Arab pre-Islamic sources for dealing with personal crimes. In pre-Islamic Arabian society, inter-tribal conflicts were resolved by a member of the offending tribe being handed over to the victim's family for qisas retaliation (killing or maiming) — the handed-over person be equivalent in gender and social status to the victim of the offense..

The legal systems of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and the northern states of Nigeria currently apply qisas to some extent.

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

In ancient societies, the principle of retaliation and of collective responsibility were common practices, and meant that the person perpetrating a crime or the tribe to which they belonged was punished in a manner, equivalent to the crime committed, following the maxim, "Life for life, eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal." Since in ancient times, collective responsibility was a common practice, as exemplified by retaliation of victims and their sympathizers against an offender’s family or community, someone else, such as the closest relative, could be punished instead of the criminal. Most of the time, it was ignored whether the act was intentional or not, and a price of life or blood was charged for each life.^{[citation needed]}

Qisas was a practice used as a resolution tool in inter-tribal conflicts in pre-Islamic Arabian society. The basis of this practice was that 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 condition of social equivalence meant the execution of a member of the murderer's tribe who was equivalent to the murdered, in that the murdered person was male or female, slave or free, elite or common. For example, only one slave can be killed for a slave, and a woman can be killed for a woman. To this pre-islamic understanding the discussion of whether a Muslim could be executed for a non-Muslim was added in Islamic period.

The qisas قصاص in Quran is,