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 of 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 pre-Islamic Arab sources for dealing with personal crimes. In the society of pre-Islamic Arabia, 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 being 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.