Islamic Law on Premediated and Unintentional Murder: A Panacea to Brutal Human Killings

Abstract

The rate at which human beings take other’s lives is pitiably unimaginable, especially intentional or premediated killing. The sacredness of life has been explained extensively in the noble Qur’an and detailed interpretations are given in the Hadith of the Prophet (P.B.U.H). Apart from judicial legal killing that is allowed, killing for personal reasons, such as: envy or jealousy, being a prosperously successful than the other, as a result of marital issues, being promoted at work, jungle justice etc. Islamic legal system since inception, establishes legal retribution for premediated killing so as to reduce the deliberate taking of human’s lives, (death sentence), while on the other hand, has blood money to be paid by the offender who is guilty of accidental or unintentional murder as a signal to be cautions and prevent future occurrence of such accidental murder. Complete implementation of this primitive punishment and retributive compensation have, to a great extent, helped reduce premediated and unintentional killing in countries where Islamic legal system is upheld. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Cairo, Kuwait etc. The findings revealed that, in Nigeria especially, the rate of premediated and unintentional killings have not considerably reduced because the perpetrators/accused persons go scot-free, or are given mere prison terms that empowers the accused person to repeat same after their prison terms have been served. The paper adopts library research method where relevant literature works were consulted. In conjunction with making the Noble Qur’an and Hadith the first points of contact; in the same vein, the paper adjudged that adoption of Islamic law on premediated and unintentional killing, in Muslim majority Nigerian States and Countries, will, in doubt reduce to the barest minimum the number of lives lost in our society. The researcher draws a conclusion/summary and made some plausible recommendations.