Blood Feud Protocols
Protocols regarding blood feuds often override court decisions, and may vary from tribe to tribe. Punishment for murder is usually harsher than punishment meted out to acts of disturbing the assahiya (tribal solidarity). The punishment for murder is usually capital punishment, but in some tribes a blood vengeance fee may be extracted instead. The general governing principle is that of Dum butlab dum ("blood begets blood"), which may be compared to the lex talionis. In many tribes, the first five levels of male cousins (Khamsa) are obligated to seek out and kill the murderer. If not found, another male member of the murderer's tribe would have to die in the retaliatory killing.
Read more about this topic: Bedouin Systems Of Justice
Famous quotes containing the words blood and/or feud:
“On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
“Sisters we are, yea, twins we be,
Yet deadly feud ‘twixt thee and me;
For from one father are we not,
Thou by old Adam wast begot,
But my arise is from above,”
—Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672)