This is a sub-article of Islamic criminal jurisprudence

Islamic criminal jurisprudence

Islamic criminal law is criminal law in accordance with Islamic law. Strictly speaking, Islamic law does not have a distinct corpus of "criminal law," as sharia courts do not have prosecutors, and all matters, even criminal ones, are in principle handled as disputes between individuals...

 and Blood money (term)

Blood money (term)

Blood money is money or some sort of compensation paid by an offender or his family group to the family or kin group of the victim.-Particular examples and uses:...

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Qisas is an Islamic term meaning "retaliation," and follows the principle of an eye for an eye

An eye for an eye

The meaning of the principle, an eye for an eye, is that a person who has injured another person receives the same injury in compensation. The exact Latin to English translation of this phrase is actually "The law of retaliation." At the root of this principle is that one of the purposes of the...

, or lex talionis, first set forth by Hammurabi

Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating to ca. 1780 BC . It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay...

, and subsequently included in the Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

 and later legal codes. In the case of murder, it means the right of the heirs of a murder victim to demand execution of the murderer.

O you who believe, equivalence is the law decreed for you when dealing with murder - the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the female for the female. If one is pardoned by the victim's kin, an appreciative response is in order, and an equitable compensation shall be paid. This is an alleviation from your Lord and mercy. Anyone who transgresses beyond this incurs a painful retribution.

The Quran also allows aggrieved parties to forfeit the right of qisas as an act of charity or an act of atonement for sins.

Qisas is enforced today in countries which follow Sharia

Sharia

Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...

, including Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 and Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

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The issue of qisas gained attention in the Western media in 2009 when Ameneh Bahrami

Ameneh Bahrami

Ameneh Bahrami is an Iranian woman blinded in an acid attack. She became the focus of international controversy after demanding that her attacker, Majid Movahedi, be punished by being similarly blinded...

, an Iranian woman blinded in an acid attack, demanded that her attacker be blinded as well. In 2011 Bahrami made a last minute retraction of this demand, requesting on the day on which the punishment was due to be carried out that her attacker, Majid Movahedi, be pardoned.