Today, I was listening to a podcast that discussed the famous case of Riggs v. Palmer. That case held that a grandson who killed his grandfather could not inherit from him, despite the absence of an exclusion of killers from inheritance in the statutory law of New York.

Despite the absence of an express rule excluding killers from inheriting, a majority of the court of appeals agreed to exclude the grandson from inheriting on the principle that no one should benefit from his own wrongdoing.

This reminded of the rule in #IslamicLaw that reportedly dates back to the #ProphetMuhammad, how also prohibited a killer from inheriting his victim, despite the absence of any such exclusion from the #Quran's legislation on #inheritance.

Now, the interesting question is how to understand the Prophet's decision: was he acting as a human interpreter of the law, a #mujtahid, exercising his reason subject to a duty to provide the best understanding of the law to the case at hand?

Or, was his decision based on some kind of private revelation, even if only implied?

While later jurists would categorize such actions of the Prophet as part of the #sunnah, there was disagreement regarding the nature of this body of law: some argued that it was "unrecited revelation (wahy ghayr matluw)".

Some, e.g., the 13th century Egyptian Maliki, characterized these Prophetic acts as human acts of legal reasoning (ijtihad) essentially no different from the legal reasoning of non-Prophets.

According to Qarafi, the difference between the Prophet's legal reasoning and the legal reasoning of non-Prophet's is essentially that the Prophet was always correct, because if he made a mistake in his reasoning God would correct him.

Now, going back to the question of whether a killer should be excluded from inheriting, the Prophet said no, at least with respect to intentional murderers. But what about non-intentional murder?

Malik was of the view that someone who caused the death of an heir, but was not guilty of murder, should be excluded from inheriting his share of the compensation due for the deceased's life, but otherwise would be entitled to take his lawful share of the decedent's estate.

We can speculate as to the reason behind the Prophet's decision and then Malik's extension of it. Islamic inheritance law aims to provide the various members of the kin group shares of the inheritance insofar as they were obligated to support the decedent during his lifetime.

There is a broad overlap between those entitled to inherit and those liable to make good the torts of the decedent, the latter known as the 'aqila, and the former generally described as the 'asaba.

It would indeed be odd if a rule intended to strengthen bonds of solidarity within a group by establishing a sharing norm among them applied to an action representing a frontal assault on that group's solidarity and duty of mutual aid!

In the case of unintentional killing, the defendant's liability is also shared with the kin group. Malik apparently reasoned that the unintentional killer's action did not represent an assault on the fundamental principles underlying inheritance law.

Accordingly, he or she should be entitled to inherit the decedent as though the decedent died of natural causes or at the hands of someone outside the kin group.

But, that person should not be able to benefit from his wrongful, but non-criminal, act by taking the heir's share of the compensation for wrongful death.

Now, I suppose one can question a lot of the inferences here, but what doesn't seem relevant is to ask is whether this #religious or #secular reasoning at play. It just seems to me to be straightforward #legal reasoning.

One of the greatest obstacles to understanding Islamic law is the continued attempt to understand it as #religiouslaw as though it is somehow generically different from #law simpliciter.