Qisas

[victor steinbok]

Are we all using Google differently? Mine shows a lot more than just Wiki
and GB.

http://goo.gl/tTwbD
Executions under the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance

> In accordance with a judge's interpretation of the punishment given as
> qisas (equal punishment for the offence committed) a death sentence was to
> have been executed in Swabi, North West Frontier Province, in a manner
> identical with the offence.



http://goo.gl/e7xEO
Understanding the Qisas and Diyat laws
>
> This law dates back to General Zia’s Qisas and Diyat Ordinance of 1980, as
> part of a cosmetic process of Islamisation that the said dictator carried
> out in Pakistan to legitimise his illegal rule on the touchstone of Islam.
> Zia himself had delayed the enforcement of these laws to ensure that
> Zulfikar Ali Bhutto would not benefit from them.


The full statement (retelling) of the law is given at the latter site.

http://goo.gl/d64fO
Crime and Punishment (QasAmah, QisAs, HadUd)
>
> The law also permits qisAs, or retaliation.  It is permitted only in cases
> where someone has deliberately and unjustly wounded, mutilated, or killed
> another, and only if the injured and the guilty hold the same status.  As
> slaves and unbelievers are inferior in status to Muslims, they are not
> entitled to qisAs according to most Muslim faqIhs (jurists).

...

QISAS
> QisAs literally means “tracking the footsteps of an enemy”; but
> technically, in Muslim law, it is retaliatory punishment, an eye for an
> eye.  It is the lex talionis of the Mosaic law.
> A Jew smashed the head of an ansAr girl and she died.  Muhammad commanded
> that his head be crushed between two stones (4138).  But in another case,
> which involved the sister of one of the Companions, bloodwite was allowed.
> She had broken someone’s teeth.  When the case was brought to Muhammad, he
> told her that “QisAs [retaliation] was a command prescribed in the Book of
> Allah.” She made urgent pleas and was allowed to go free after paying a
> money compensation to the victim’s next of kin (4151).



VS-)

On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com>wrote:

>
> Google Books turns up some hits from the nineteenth century. The earliest I
> see is 1819, "The annals of the college of Fort William" by Thomas Roebuck:
> "No. 2. An exercise on the Law of Qisas or Retaliation, extracted from the
> Mooheeti Surukhsee" [A dot under each "s" in "Qisas," a dot under the
> next-to-last "h" and two under the last "t."] (http://bit.ly/oI9rjZ)
>
> Another notable citation is from 1885 in "The cyclopędia of India and of
> Eastern and Southern Asia: commercial, industrial and scientific, products
> of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, useful arts and
> manufactures" by Edward Balfour: "Qisas, literally retaliation, the lex
> talionis of Exodus xxi. 24; but Mahomed allowed a money compensation, at the
> discretion of the next of kin, to the murdered person." (
> http://bit.ly/pbBbNR)
>
> Benjamin Barrett
> Seattle, WA

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org