2/178-179 — Retaliation
"You who believe! Retaliation for those killed has been written for you… Whoever is pardoned anything by his brother, let what is fitting be followed, and let payment be made to him in a good way."
Root q-ṣ-ṣ: to follow a track, to go after. From the same root come qiṣṣa (a story told — the tracing of an event's trail) and qaṣaṣ. The Qurʾān uses this root in what Moses's mother said to his sister as well: "Follow him" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/11).
Qiṣāṣ, in the word's own logic, is therefore the following of a track: whatever the act did, the return goes along its trail, neither short of it nor beyond it. The word carries the equality of the penalty in its own root.
To understand this ruling one has to know what went before it. In the Arabia of the age of ignorance the blood feud was disproportionate: when someone from a strong tribe was killed, not only the killer but many people from the weak tribe could be killed. The measure was not what the dead man had done but whose man he was.
The ruling of retaliation cuts this chain: the return is attached to the doer and fixed one for one. The regulation, that is, does not introduce the penalty — the penalty was already there and was without limit. What the regulation introduces is a limit.
The finest place in the verse is here. In setting out the possibility of pardon, the word "his brother" is used of the guardian of the one killed.
Within the sentence, that is, a bond of brotherhood is established between the killer and the side of the killed — at precisely the moment when there is blood between them. The choice of word does not merely offer pardon as a possibility; it also builds the ground that makes pardon possible. A person finds it hard to forgive someone he does not count a brother.
And what follows the pardon is regulated too: "let what is fitting be followed and let payment be made in a good way" — the creditor is not to press, the debtor is not to delay. So that the pardon itself does not turn into a new enmity.
On the face of it a contradictory sentence: life is said to lie in a sentence of death. But it is true in two respects:
Second, and more importantly, the cutting of the chain. The result of disproportionate vengeance is counter-vengeance; every return produces a new debt, and the blood feud runs for generations. Retaliation stops this chain by fixing the proportion. The lives saved are not those of the person on whom the ruling is carried out but of those who would die if it were not.
| Word | Its root | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| ʿaql (2/44) | To bind — ʿiqāl, the rope that ties a camel | The power to hold |
| ḥijr (al-Fajr 89/5) | Stone, obstacle, boundary — ḥajr, maḥjūr | The power to restrain |
| lubb (2/179) | The core, the inside of a thing — the kernel of the almond, of the walnut | Passing the shell and reaching the core |
All three measure not a capacity but a function. And the third says something different from the others: the possessor of lubb is one who does not stay at the shell. Why possessors of understanding are addressed in this verse is plain — the sentence "in retaliation there is life" is meaningful only for someone who looks below the surface.