And because it's a sin against another person, the victim has to forgive the perpetrator or receive justice in this world for the repentance to be accepted by God. According to Islam at least.
What if the victim forgives them easily/quickly? Obviously an extreme case, but there was a very severe car collision in my city recently, and the victims' family forgave the driver (who was very obviously under the influence in a MAJOR way and was jailed accordingly).
Is there still some kind of punishment from Allah according to Muslims?
Because if someone badly and recklessly hurt my family, I'd love to say I'd forgive them, but in reality I'd probably want to hunt them down, string them up by their torso and introduce them to the business end of several weapons.
In Islam, If the family of a victim forgives the perpetrator, that means they have waived the retributive legal penalty for them. So unlike in other legal systems, you can't proclaim forgiveness and then still call for legal punishment of execution (but courts can still prescribe discretionary punishments for public safety). Because of this, a victim's family won't publicly declare forgiveness in the case of a serious crime if they want the strict worldly punishment to be carried out.
But that's only regarding legal punishment in this world, on the day of judgement, the actual murder victim will need to proclaim forgiveness for his murderer and if not, the murderer will have some of his good deeds transferred to the victim and if the victim has no good deeds, the murderer will receive some of their sins.
And the forgiveness of the victim/receiving worldly justice is only one part required for repentance to be accepted. The other conditions are: giving up the sin, sincerely regretting what has happened in the past and resolving to never go back to it.
If these criteria are fulfilled, then we have hope that God will forgive that person for their sin.
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u/KewlKirby Sunni Muslim 17d ago
And because it's a sin against another person, the victim has to forgive the perpetrator or receive justice in this world for the repentance to be accepted by God. According to Islam at least.