وَلَا تَقْتُلُوا۟ ٱلنَّفْسَ ٱلَّتِى حَرَّمَ ٱللَّهُ إِلَّا بِٱلْحَقِّ
Wa lā taqtulu'l-nafsa'llatī ḥarrama'llāhu illā bi'l-ḥaqq, wa man qutila maẓlūman fa-qad jaʿalnā li-waliyyihi sulṭānan fa-lā yusrif fi'l-qatl, innahū kāna manṣūrā
"Do not kill the soul that God has made inviolable, save by right. And whoever is killed wrongfully — We have given his next of kin an authority; but let him not go to excess in killing. He has already been helped."
| No. | Sentence | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wa lā taqtulu'l-nafsa'llatī ḥarrama'llāh | A prohibition |
| 2 | Illā bi'l-ḥaqq | An exception — a qualification |
| 3 | Fa-lā yusrif fi'l-qatl | A limit on the exception itself |
I record this as my own reading, and its support is the presence of the third sentence: immediately after granting an exception, the verse sets a limit on the exception itself.
The structure of the text is thus: prohibition → the case that is permitted → the limit on the permission too. And without the third step the second would have been left open-ended.
The word occurs several times in this sūra (33, 65, 80), and in the three occurrences in three different senses:
| Verse | Sulṭān | To whom |
|---|---|---|
| 33 | Authority | To the next of kin of the one killed |
| 65 | Mastery — negated | Of Satan: laysa laka ʿalayhim sulṭān |
| 80 | A supporting power | Inside a prayer: sulṭānan naṣīrā |
The root س-ر-ف: to exceed the measure. The root was treated at 25/67 in al-Furqān (lam yusrifū wa lam yaqturū), and there it stood in the context of spending.
The usage here must be recorded, and the difference is large: in al-Furqān isrāf was in spending, here it is in retaliation. The same root, once for money and once for a life.
I give this as my own reading, and its support is the shared sense of the root: in both places what is forbidden is exceeding the measure. The verse thus sets a measure even for the one who has a right.
In the classical sources there has been dispute over what this "excess" covers (killing one who was not the perpetrator, killing more than one person, interfering with the corpse). No legal ruling is issued in this commentary; what the verse lays down in its own wording is that the permission is not without limit.