Victim as Stakeholder
The victim is regarded as central in the prosecution of qisas crimes.[888] Qisas crimes affect and breach individual rights - for example, taking a person’s life intentionally or unintentionally and injuring a person’s body intentionally or unintentionally.
In other words, a victim is considered as the stakeholder in qisas, and has the authority to decide on the kind and amount of ‘punishment’ of the offender. The ‘punishments’ include three basic options in terms of recourses: to retaliate; to ask for compensation; or to forgive. Such authority awarded to the victim of a qisas crime is because the life of a person is the most precious gift from Allah, and as such it needs to be preserved and maintained.The right of the victim or his/her heir to choose and decide on the three recourses of qisas is sourced from the Quran:
And do not kill any one whom Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause, and whoever is slain unjustly, We have indeed given to his heir authority, so let him not exceed the just limits in slaying; surely he is aided.[889]
The empowerment of the victim in qisas shows the flexibility in the administration of Islamic criminal justice. Nevertheless, such empowerment is regulated so as to prevent individuals from taking the laws into their own hands. In other words, the authority will still regulate the processes such as determination and payment of diyyah, discussion between parties, execution of retaliation and grant of pardon. This is evident from a Hadith of the Prophet (pbuh) who, when acting as a mediator and a judge who supervised the communication between the victim or his/her heirs and the offender, determined the option as favoured by the victim and ordered for the execution of the option opted by the victim. The same Hadith also proved the special treatment of the victim or his/her heirs in prosecuting the offender where the authority to opt is given solely to the victim. The Hadith is as follows:
Narrated by Wa’il ibn Hujr: ‘I was with the Prophet (^) when a man who was a murderer and had a strap around his neck was brought to him. He (the Prophet) then called the legal guardian of the victim and asked him: do you forgive him? He said: no. He (the Prophet) asked: will you accept blood money? He said: no. He (the Prophet) asked: Will you kill him? He said: yes. He (the Prophet) said: take him (the murderer). When he (the Prophet) turned his back, he said: do you forgive him? After repeating all this (four times), he said: if you forgive him, he will bear the burden of his own sin and the sin of the victim. He (the guardian) then forgive him.’[890]
B.