Blood money in Islam

Diyah is not the same for non-Muslims and Muslims in sharia courts.[19][20] Muslims and non-Muslims are treated as unequal in the sentencing process, in cases of unintentional deaths.[2][3]

In early history of Islam, there were considerable disagreements in Muslim jurist opinions on applicability of qisas and diyah when a Muslim murdered a non-Muslim (dhimmi, musta'min or a slave).[21] Most scholars of Hanafi school of sharia ruled that, if a Muslim killed a dhimmi, qisas was applicable against the Muslim, but this could be averted by paying a diyah. In one case, the Hanafi jurist Abu Yusuf initially ordered qisas when a Muslim killed a dhimmi, but under Caliph Harun al-Rashid's pressure replaced the order with diyah if the victim's family members were unable to prove the victim was paying jizya willingly as a dhimmi.[22] The Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali code of sharia have historically ruled that Qisas does not apply against a Muslim, if he murders any non-Muslim (including dhimmi) or a slave for any reason.[23][24] A diyah was payable instead. The early Hanafi jurists considered the payable diyah for Muslim and non-Muslim victims to be same, while the Maliki and Hanbali schools considered a non-Muslim value of life as worth half of a Muslim, and the Shafi'i school considered it worth a third.[25] The Ja'fari school considered a non-Muslim victim's value to be only 800 dirhams in contrast to 10000 dirhams for a Muslim victim.[16] The compensation value payable to the owner of a slave by a Muslim murderer, was the market price paid for the slave.[23]

In the Hanafi and Maliki sharia doctrines, a diyah was not payable to a non-Muslim from a murderer's estate, if the murderer dies for natural or other causes during the trial.[23]

If the victim was musta'min (non-Muslim foreigner visiting), or an apostate (converting from Islam to another religion), neither diya nor qisas applied against the Muslim who killed the victim.[21][25] But Abdul Aziz bin Mabrouk Al-Ahmadi narrates that the Hanafi scholars say that Musta'min is entitled to Diyya equal to Diyya of a Muslim, and he quotes this opinion from a group of other muslim scholars, including a some of Companions of the Prophet, and he also narrates that this is one of the opinions of the Hanbalis if the killing occurred intentionally.[26]

Jurists of different schools of Islamic jurisprudence assign different values to non-Muslims. According to the Hanbali sharia, the life of a Christian or Jew is worth half that of a Muslim, and thus the diyah awarded by modern-era Hanbali courts is half that awarded in case of Muslim's death.[3] Maliki fiqh also consider the life of a Christian or Jew to be worth half a Muslim's life,[2] but Shafi'i schools of jurisprudence consider it to be worth a third that of a Muslim. The legal schools of Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi'i Sunni Islam as well as those of Shia Islam have considered the life of polytheists and atheists as one-fifteenth the value of a Muslim during sentencing.[2]

In Saudi Arabia, when a person kills another, intentionally or unintentionally, the prescribed blood money must be decided by sharia court.

The amount of compensation is based on the percentage of responsibility. Blood money is to be paid not only for murder, but also in the case of unnatural death, interpreted to mean death in a fire, industrial or road accident, for instance, as long as the responsibility for it falls on the accused. The diyah compensation amount depends on the religion of the victim.[33]

Human Rights Watch and United States' Religious Freedom Report note that in sharia courts of Saudi Arabia, "The calculation of accidental death or injury compensation is discriminatory. In the event a court renders a judgment in favor of a plaintiff who is a Jewish or Christian male, the plaintiff is only entitled to receive 50 percent of the compensation a Muslim male would receive; all other non-Muslims (Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Animists, Atheists) are only entitled to receive one-sixteenth of the amount a male Muslim would receive".[3][34][35]

While Saudi judges have the last say in any settlement, as of 2011, diya price for a Muslim man, in Saudi Arabia, was SR300,000 ($80,000) for an accidental death and SR400,000 ($106,666) in premeditated murder.[36] (The price was raised that year due to a rise in the price of camels.)[36]

Diyah in Saudi has been controversial, as in a 2013 case, where a father molested and murdered his five-year-old daughter, but avoided jail by paying money to her mother.[10]

During the four haraam months; namely Dhu al-Qi'dah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Muharram, and Rajab; when wars and killings were traditionally discouraged in the Arabian Peninsula and later in the larger Islamic world, the blood money rates is increased by a third.[37]

Iran's 1991 Islamic Penal Code originally only specified the diya for a Muslim man. In the absence of a specification of diya for non-Muslims, Iranian judges referred to traditional Shi'ite fiqh. In 2003, Article 297 of the 1991 Code was amended according to a fatwa by Ayatollah Khamenei. This resulted in recognition of equal diya for Muslims and non-Muslims.[6][7][38] However, according to the 2006 US State Department Religious Freedom Report on Iran, women and Bahais were excluded from the equalization provisions of 2003 and that Baha'i blood was considered "Mobah, meaning it can be spilled with impunity".[38] The 2013 Islamic Penal Code (which replaced the 1991 code), recognizes the equality between Muslims and non-Muslims in article 554.[6] The 2013 penal code also makes diya for men and women equal in cases of homicide.[6] However, according to Mohammad H. Tavana, it is unclear if the diya between men and women is equal in cases of bodily harm; that has been left to the Iranian courts to decide.[6]

In Iraq, the Bedouin tribes carry on the practice of demanding blood money, though this does not necessarily obviate the proceedings of the secular judicial system.[39]

Pakistan, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim nation, introduced Qisas and Diyat Ordinance in 1990, amending sections 229 to 338 of Pakistan Penal code.[40] The new Ordinance replaced British era criminal laws on bodily hurt and murder with sharia-compliant provisions, as demanded by the Shariat Appellate Bench of Pakistan's Supreme Court. The Criminal Procedure Code was also amended to give legal heirs of a murdered person to enter into compromise and accept diyah compensation, instead of demanding qisas-based retaliatory penalties for murder or bodily hurt.[40] The democratically elected government of Nawaz Sharif, in 1997, replaced the Ordinance by enacting the qisas and diyah sharia provisions as the law, through an Act of its Parliament.[41] The sharia-compliant Qisas and Diyat law made murder a private offense, not a crime against society or state, and thus the pursuit, prosecution, and punishment for murder has become the responsibility of the victim's heirs and guardians.[41] The Pakistan Penal Code modernized the Hanafi doctrine of qisas and diya by eliminating distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims.[5]

Controversies arising from the Diyat law of Pakistan involve cases of honor killings of girls, where the killers were employed by the same family members of the victim who under the Diyyah law have the power to forgive the killer the loophole was corrected in 2016.[41][42] Another issue is the intentional murder or bodily harm of poor people by wealthy individuals, where the only punishment the perpetrators suffer is paying monetary compensation that constitutes a small fraction of their income or wealth.[43]

Somalis whether in Djibouti, Somalia or Somaliland are all predominantly Sunni Muslim.[44] Different groups within Somali society undertake oral agreements with each other to define xeer law. Despite this informal nature, there is a series of generally accepted principles, agreements, and ideas that constitute xeer, referred to collectively as "xissi adkaaday".

Diya is one of these principles and is referred to in Somali as mag. It is generally paid by the collective group (clan, sub-clan, lineage, or mag group) from which an offender originates as compensation for the crimes of murder, bodily assault, theft, rape, and defamation of character, given to the victim or victim's family.[45]Mag payment most often takes the form of livestock usually camels which are found in the highest concentration in Somali inhabited territories and prized as a measure of wealth. As such victims will readily accept the animal as a form of compensation.[46]