A Reflection on Cases of Deviation from Principles Governing Equal Retaliation for Causing Harm to Body

Retaliation (Retribution) is one of the endorsed rulings of Islam that provides the victim (victim of an offence) with the possibility of causing an injury like what the murderer has caused. Retribution is an early penalty for intentional crimes whose implementation is based on respect of some fundamental principles such as tit for tat and equality principles, principle of lack of punishment awarded by judge and the principle of adequacy and equity. However, if the execution of retaliation leads to the violation of these principles, the principles will be replaced with other principles, and retribution is replaced with blood money. The substitution of principles rests on several other fundamental principles of Islam including the precaution principle in blood or principle of detention of retaliation or the principle of equality in punishment deviation from which requires a valid and credible argument. However, we van notice some deviation from rules in the Islamic criminal law 1392 (2013) regarding the retaliation of some organs among which we can refer to retribution, criminal’s (murderer’s) left hand in the absence of the right hand and retaliation of foot instead of hand in the absence of hand (article 393 ICL), retaliation of person’s two eyes when the criminal has intentionally made one eye of the victim blind (article 403 ICL), retaliation of tongue with taste for a tongue without taste (article 410 ICL), and an eyelid of a healthy eye for a blind eye (article 406 ICL). To investigate the logic behind these rules in jurisprudence, to consider different opinions, to deal with the viewpoints in other religions in similar cases, and to reconcile these issues with legal principles, the exceptions will be studied and ways to replace them will be examined.